Less than two months after standing atop the podium with the 4x100m women’s freestyle team in Tokyo, the 27-year-old made the announcement while in the southern Italian city of Naples for an International Swim League event.
The swimming star said she had tested positive for the virus even though she is “double vaccinated and took the right precaution set in place through the ISL”.
“I feel extremely unlucky but I do believe this is a huge wake-up call,” Wilson wrote on Instagram.
“[COVID-19] is a serious thing and when it comes it hits very hard.
“I’d be stupid to say I wasn’t scared.”
The star added that she might have been more susceptible to the virus after “a crazy few months” that had left her “run down physically and mentally”.
In an Instagram story on Monday, Wilson encouraged people to get vaccinated.
She said that although she had tested positive, her vaccination lessened her symptoms and “protected the people around me who I have been close to over this past period of time”.
“Please continue to get vaccinated,” she said.
Wilson was a key member of the Australian swim team that won a record nine gold medals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
It was her second overall, having claimed her first as a member of the same relay team at the Rio 2016 Olympics.
She also won bronze in the women’s 4x200m relay in Tokyo.
Queensland-born but based in South Australia, Wilson competes in the lucrative ISL for the Los Angeles team, which includes fellow Aussie Olympians Bronte Campbell and Matt Wilson.
