After the final whistle

Pakistani swimmer and Olympian Kiran Khan's childhood was organised around a swimming pool. There was school, but there was also training before and after it. Weekends meant competitions. Travel had to fit around swimming, as did food, sleep and recovery. When other children had free time to play or socialise, Khan remembers spending much of hers at the pool.

For two years, she even left regular school and was home-schooled so she could train and compete. It was not an easy decision for the family. There were disagreements, she recalls, but her father believed she could make something out of swimming and was determined to give her that chance.

Together, father and daughter would sit down with a calendar whenever another competition approached. They would mark the date and work backwards: how many weeks remained, what training needed to be done and when she needed to be ready.

“There was no room for any other activity,” Khan says.

She knew what each day required of her. Wake up. Train. Study. Recover. Eat properly. Sleep on time. Then do it again. There was always something ahead — a national championship, an international competition, a faster time or some part of her technique that needed improving.

For years, that was normal life. What was less clear was what happened when there was no competition to count backwards from.

“When I'm done with the competition, then you have heaps of time in your hand,” she says. “You don't know what to do.”

Khan did not suddenly stop swimming. Even today, she is reluctant to describe herself as someone who has left the sport. The competition gradually became less important, coaching became more important, and the relationship she had with the pool began to change.

For an athlete, perhaps that is one of the stranger parts of reaching the end of a competitive career. The sport does not necessarily disappear. The routine around it does.

And after spending years preparing for what comes next, there is suddenly no next competition to prepare for.

Knowing when to stop

For Pakistani jiu-jitsu athlete Muhammad Ammar, the end first appeared before he was ready for it.

An accident around 2021 left the jiu-jitsu athlete with a broken leg and kept him away from competition for about a year. During the long recovery, Ammar began to wonder whether his competitive career had already ended. He eventually returned, won a bronze medal at an Asian competition and competed at world level again, but retirement had become something he was willing to think about.

What he did not want was for his final appearance to come after a defeat. “I decided that if I have to retire, I should retire with a good achievement,” says Ammar. “I thought that if Allah gives me a position, I will retire. I got gold and I thought there could not be a better opportunity to retire from my international career.”

He had made the decision before entering what would become his final World Championship. Once it was over, however, achieving the ending he wanted did not make leaving easier.

“When it was over, I had a feeling that I would not participate in the playing squad again,” he said. “It was a very sad moment for me. When a player goes to play, there is a different charm to it. I was very sad, but sometimes you have to make a decision.”

Ammar wanted to leave on his own terms. He had seen athletes continue until defeat made the decision for them and did not want his career remembered that way. For him, winning offered a cleaner point at which to stop.

Former Pakistan hockey goalkeeper Imran Butt reached the same decision under different circumstances.

By the time Pakistan went to the 2018 Hockey World Cup, Butt was 35. He had already begun looking at what was happening around the national game, particularly the financial problems and issues surrounding players' daily allowances. He also felt younger goalkeepers needed their opportunity.

“At that time, I started realising that you can't play mentally relaxed because of financial issues, daily allowance issues, all those things were increasing,” says Butt. “I started realising that I should say goodbye to hockey and give a chance to young players.”

The World Cup became the point at which he intended to leave. Unlike Ammar, Butt was not waiting for one last medal. His decision came from age, circumstances around the sport and an acceptance that another generation needed its chance.

For Kiran, there was no such final tournament.

Her departure from competitive swimming was harder to place on a calendar. Years of competition had also brought injuries, including problems with her foot, shoulder and back. Over time, she began to recognise that her relationship with training was changing.

“I don't think there was one single dramatic moment. It happened gradually,” says Khan. “I remember reaching a point where I realised, I was not getting into the pool with the same pressure of thinking, ‘I have to get faster. I have to make it this time. I have to prepare for the next competition’.”

For Ammar, there was a gold medal and a decision already made. For Butt, there was a final World Cup. Kiran had no comparable last day. She simply reached a point where getting into the pool no longer always meant preparing for the next race.

When the routine disappears

For Imran Butt, playing hockey had meant moving from one commitment to another. There were national camps, foreign tours and domestic tournaments, and once one ended, another was usually waiting. Even Eid and other occasions were sometimes spent away from home.

“It feels like you are walking in a circle,” says Butt. “You get free from the training camp, go on tours, come back and then there are domestic events. At that time, there was a lot of domestic hockey in Pakistan.”

The routine demanded sacrifices. Butt spent long periods away from his family, but after years of living that way, the schedule had also become normal. Retirement removed it much faster than he expected.

“It disturbed me a lot,” he says. “After getting out of that routine, to keep myself busy, I did some Asian Hockey Federation (AHF) goalkeeper courses. After that, I trained kids and shared my experience.”

What Butt missed was not only playing. It was a life built around playing. Travelling with teammates, sharing rooms, sitting in the dressing room and preparing together for matches had occupied a large part of his adult life. Representing Pakistan had taken him to the level he had spent years trying to reach, and stepping away also meant losing the everyday experiences that came with it.

“There was the Pakistan shirt, travelling, playing and having fun with your colleagues in the dressing room,” he says. “Taking a medal and celebrating after that, sharing with teammates, roommates, making fun. These are things you can never forget.”

For Ammar, the change has been less about stopping training altogether and more about changing its purpose. He still wants to maintain his fitness, but there is no longer a competition demanding the same intensity. The hours that once belonged to his own preparation can now be spent on the athletes he hopes to coach and on developing himself as a referee.

What he expects to miss most is something more specific. “The training that we did under the coach, that training cannot happen again,” says Ammar. “Everything else is connected to sports.”

For years, the relationship between athlete and coach had shaped how he trained. Retirement meant accepting that even if he remained fit and stayed involved in jiu-jitsu, he would probably not train in quite the same way again.

Khan has found it difficult to separate exercise from everyday life at all. More than two decades of competitive sport left behind habits that did not disappear simply because there was no race ahead.

“There has never been a day when I did not train myself,” she says. “You just cannot go from training morning and evening and doing multiple gym sessions to nothing at all.”

She still runs and does weight training. After three children, she says she continues to approach exercise with the mentality she developed as a competitive swimmer. An ordinary workout does not always feel enough.

“Once you're an athlete, you train like an athlete,” says Khan. “When you go and do regular gym, it just doesn't feel right to you. To me, it doesn't feel right.”

The change in routine, however, can also return some of what competition had taken away.

Butt married in 2015 and became a father while he was still playing. Hockey often kept him away, and he says he could not give his family the time he wanted to. Once the playing schedule disappeared, some of that time came back.

The empty space left by competition, then, was not necessarily empty for long. Butt filled part of it with family and goalkeeper training. Khan kept exercising and moved further into coaching. Ammar began redirecting his training hours towards students and refereeing.

The routine that had organised their lives had changed. None of them, however, simply stopped being involved in sport.

Who are you now?

For Butt, retirement changed more than his daily schedule. It also changed how people saw him.

During his playing years, recognition came with representing Pakistan. His performances were followed by the media, people associated him with the national team and his name remained visible through hockey. Once he stopped playing, he felt some of that recognition disappear much faster than he had expected.

“When you are representing your country, you are highlighted by sponsors, colleagues, your club and the media,” says Butt. “But after retirement, your identity is lost very quickly.”

The change was particularly noticeable to him because hockey itself no longer receives the attention it once did. Butt says younger players may not even recognise some of those who represented Pakistan before them. It is one reason he has continued talking about hockey and supporting the game through his social media presence.

Ammar looks at the same transition differently. He accepts that the identity he had as an international competitor will change, but does not see retirement as the end of being known within jiu-jitsu.

“Yes, there is a change in identity,” he says. “We will make a new identity.”

That could be as a coach, referee or administrator. For Ammar, the next stage is not about trying to hold on to his old role. It is about finding another one within the sport that occupied much of his life.

Khan is less willing to separate the two in the first place.

“I don't really see it as leaving Kiran Khan the swimmer behind,” she says. “She's still a very important part of who I am. I just learned that I'm more than the medals, records and competition.”

Swimming was how people came to know her, but she does not see the end of regular competition as requiring another identity. Coaching has instead added to the one she already had.

“If I was Kiran Khan as a swimmer, I'll be known as Kiran Khan as a coach as well,” she says.

All three have remained close to their sports, but they have responded differently to no longer being the person competing. Butt has tried to hold on to the recognition that came with playing for Pakistan. Ammar is prepared to build another identity. Khan does not believe she needs to leave the old one behind.

The competition may stop, but deciding what happens to the athlete who existed around it can take longer.

What pays the bills?

For Butt, one of the biggest uncertainties that can follow retirement was partly taken care of years before he played his final international match.

He joined Pakistan International Airlines through hockey in 2007. The job gave him financial security during his playing career and, eventually, somewhere to go when hockey was no longer his full-time occupation. After retirement, Butt moved into PIA's regular workforce and now works in cargo sales.

“I got financial benefits from PIA because of hockey,” he says. “There was not much money in hockey, but I was lucky that in 2007 there were inductions and I became part of PIA.”

For decades, employment with departments such as PIA, Wapda and Pakistan Railways has provided Pakistani athletes with salaries while they competed. That structure went through a period of disruption when the federal government directed public departments and corporations to stop funding sports teams in 2021. The decision was reversed in 2022, although the restoration of teams and athlete employment has remained a work in progress.

Butt knows that the route available to him is not necessarily available to every athlete coming through the system now.

Ammar also sees employment as one of the advantages departmental sport can offer, but believes athletes need to think beyond it. Prize money or other earnings during a successful period, he says, can be used to establish something that continues to generate income after competition ends.

“You should not keep your career only in sports,” says Ammar. “If you have a small business, then you do not need anyone. And you sponsor yourself.”

The advice comes from someone who admits he did not have his own post-retirement career mapped out while he was competing. At the time, most of his attention was on training and the next competition.

For Khan, preparing for life beyond competition meant making sure swimming was never the only qualification she had.

She continued her education alongside sport, even if that sometimes meant taking breaks and returning to her studies later. She also used whatever time she could find during her competitive years to develop other skills, including online courses.

For women athletes, Khan believes the calculation can be more complicated. Financial independence is important, but decisions about work can also involve mobility, family expectations and whether a workplace feels suitable and safe. When she was competing, she remembers few clearly defined career routes for women once their playing years ended.

Her advice to younger swimmers now is not to abandon sport in anticipation of what may come later, but to make sure there is something alongside it.

“Never let swimming become the only thing you have,” she says. “Your athletic career is important, but it is temporary. Education is something you can continue, even if you have to take a break and come back to it.”

For athletes whose working lives can begin while they are still teenagers, the question is not only when competition will end. It is whether, when it does, they have something else from which to begin.

Learning another job

Khan had been swimming for most of her life when coaching first presented itself as a possible career. But knowing how to swim at an elite level, she realised, did not necessarily mean knowing how to teach someone else.

She first began coaching about 10 years ago after her father told her that some girls were looking for a female coach. What started casually became more serious when he encouraged her to get formal training. Khan went on to pursue coaching courses and certifications outside Pakistan.

“I just did not become a coach overnight because I was a swimmer,” she says. “You have to take the proper route.”

It is a distinction she now feels strongly about. An athlete may understand the physical demands of a sport and know what competition feels like, but coaching requires another set of skills. For Khan, the experience she had accumulated in the pool became useful only when she learnt how to pass it on.

“I just did it out of fun,” she says. “And that fun actually gave me a career.”

Butt came to a similar realisation when he moved towards coaching after retirement. He wanted to pass on what he had learnt as a goalkeeper and completed coaching courses before working with younger players. Once he entered the role, however, he found that playing and coaching were very different jobs.

“I realised that coaching is totally different from playing,” says Butt.

His frustration was not only with the work itself. Butt says he wanted greater authority to change how goalkeepers were developed and selected. Without it, he eventually stepped away from coaching the national side, although he still hopes to establish his own goalkeeper project in the future.

Ammar is only beginning that transition. Coaching, refereeing and administration are now among the paths he sees for himself, even though none formed part of a detailed retirement plan while he was competing.

“There was no plan at all,” he says. “When I thought about retirement, these paths started opening up. When a person thinks of closing a door, his vision becomes clear. He knows which doors he can open.”

The time he once spent preparing himself for competition, Ammar says, can now be directed towards younger athletes.

“The time that we used to spend on our training, we will spend it with the students,” he says. “We will focus on our refereeship and pursue it at the administrative level.”

For all three, staying in sport has therefore not meant continuing the same career under a different title. Khan had to learn how to coach. Butt discovered the limitations and responsibilities that came with the other side of the field. Ammar is still working out which of the available paths will become his own.

Years of competition gave them experience. What came afterwards required them to learn how to use it differently.

Without the clock

Khan can still remember when getting into the pool meant there was always something to chase.

A training session was never simply a swim. There was a time to beat, a competition approaching or another part of her performance that needed work. Even when one event ended, the next one gave the training that followed a reason. “For many years, every lap had a purpose,” she says. “Every training session was connected to my race goal.”

That changed gradually. There was no announcement that her competitive career was over and, even now, Khan does not describe herself as retired from swimming. She simply reached a stage where she could enter the water without preparing for another race.

“I was just swimming without needing to prove anything to the clock,” she says. “But eventually, I started enjoying the water in a different way.”

Perhaps that is why Khan still finds it difficult to say she ever left swimming.

The pool is still there. So is the swimmer.

Only the clock matters less now.