Rio 2016 Olympic medallist Stephen Milne has taken the decision to hang up his goggles and racesuit and retire from competitive swimming.
Milne's senior international debut for a British Swimming team came back in Berlin in 2014. From there, he would go on to claim World Championship and European titles as part of Men's 4x200m Freestyle Relay outfits in 2017 and 2018 respectively, as well as competing over distance events individually.
Arguably the crowning moment of Stephen's career - which ultimately featured medals at every senior level - came just before those golden results in Budapest and Glasgow, when, at the Olympic Games of 2016, he teamed up with Duncan Scott, James Guy and Dan Wallace to take a superb Men's 4x200m Freestyle Relay silver.
While his final involvement with a GB team was that title-winning European campaign in 2018, his international career concluded with two bronze medals (Men's 4x200m Freestyle and Men's 4x100m Medley Relays) for Team Scotland at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games this summer.
Having spent the bulk of his career at Perth City Swim Club, training under coach Ann Dickson, Milne concluded his competitive life in the pool at the University of Stirling, working with Steve Tigg and Bradley Hay - and he is grateful to each of those personnel, among many others, who played their part along a memorable journey.
"When I decided I wanted to compete at the Olympics, I had no idea what the road ahead would look like. All I knew, at the age of 11, was that I loved swimming and I wanted to be as good at it as those I saw ahead of me. That was the spark that drove me, got me out of bed in the mornings and kept me going when things got tough," he said.
"I am immensely proud to have represented my nation, my country and the teams I have been a part of, but I didn't do any of it on my own. To everyone who has been with me on this journey over the last 19 years, thank you.
"To my friends and family, teammates and coaches, from club to performance, within aquatics and across the wider community, I couldn't have done it without you. The fact that you believed in me kept me believing in myself."
Reflecting on Stephen's career and his retirement, British Swimming Performance Director Chris Spice said: "Stephen should be very proud of everything he achieved in his swimming career, in and out of the pool.
"Over the years, he has helped to establish our Men's 4x200m Freestyle Relay as a world-leading relay outfit, becoming an Olympic silver medallist in Rio and then following it up as part of the world-title winning team a year later in Budapest. To have also won medals at European and Commonwealth level truly shows his quality as an athlete. Everyone at British Swimming wishes him all the best for the future."
