London, Feb 6 : Rebecca Adlington she announced her retirement from competitive swimming, as she admitted that she was simply `too old' to keep up with the new generation of water babies.

"Female distance swimming is going a lot, lot younger," she said as she reflected on the London Olympics of last summer and how she lost her 800 metres freestyle crown to 15-year-old American Katie Ledecky.

According to the Telegraph, the career of an elite female swimmer may appear brutally short ,but Adlington's six years as a senior competitor have been time enough for her to amass the largest medal collection by a British swimmer.

The highlight, she said, was naturally her Olympic golds in the 400m and 800m freestyle in Beijing in 2008, the latter in a world-record time (8min 14.10sec) that still stands, but there were also the two bronzes she won in London and 13 other medals garnered from world and European Championships and the Commonwealth Games.

She is, without question, the greatest British swimmer of all time, the paper said.

Although her competitive career is over, Adlington insists her involvement with swimming is definitely not.

Having recently qualified as a ''level two' swimming teacher, she has plans to go into partnership with a leisure operator to roll out a learn-to-swim programme for young children entitled Becky Adlington's Swim Stars, the report said. (ANI)