History-making Belgian gymnast Nina Derwael announced her retirement from competitive sport on Tuesday (15 July), just weeks after she claimed gold medals on the uneven bars and balance beam at the 2025 European Championships.
“I have achieved what I wanted and what I was capable of achieving. I was able to prove what I had in me,” said Derwael in a press release from the Belgian federation. “To this day, I’ve always gone to the gym with great joy, simply because I love it so much and because I always had something to aim for.
“The European Championships in Leipzig was one of those goals, although I didn’t dare hope for gold,” she continued. “I had only been able to train my final routine a few times at full intensity, out of caution, and performed it purely on experience. That made me realise it simply can’t get any better than this.”
Derwael, a three-time Olympian, won her first global medal at the World Championships in 2017 when she took bronze on the uneven bars. It was the first medal at the Worlds for a female Belgian gymnast.
She followed that success up with gold at the Worlds in 2018 and 2019 before making history at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, held in 2021, where she earned her nation’s first Olympic gold medal in artistic gymnastics on bars.
But in recent years, Derwael has struggled with injury, including a dislocated shoulder in late 2023 that held her out of the World Championships. The 25-year-old was able to recover in time to earn a spot to Paris 2024 through the apparatus World Cup events.
In Paris, Derwael narrowly missed out on a medal, finishing fourth in the uneven bars final.
“If I want to play a meaningful role again at a World Championships (or Olympic Games), I would need to put even more strain on my body for longer – and that’s a risk I no longer want to take,” reflected Derwael. “In recent weeks, my mind kept asking: ‘Hasn’t it been enough? Is it worth putting my body on the line?’ Which ultimately led me to conclude: it’s been beautiful. In fact, it’s been very beautiful.”