A nagging injury has forced 20-year-old swim star Alexandra Gabor into retirement.

The former Glacier Bear has spent the last two years at Stanford University, but was never able to compete for the Cardinal swim team that lured her to California with a full scholarship.

Gabor said calling it quits was "a very hard decision.”

Since the end of her Grade 12 year at F.H. Collins, Gabor has suffered from a painful injury called thoracic outlet syndrome, a compression of the nerves and arteries into the arm between the first rib and collarbone.

Symptoms included numb hands or painful swelling in her hands while swimming, said Gabor.

"The injury kept getting worse once I got to Stanford, and then the decision was made to have part of my left first rib surgically removed in order to open up that space,” she explained.

While the surgery did reduce the pain, it also came with a list of complications – including a torn suprascapular nerve, two non-functioning rotator cuff muscles, and a punctured lung that saw Gabor unable to lie down for a month.

Last June, Gabor endured a second operation to graft her nerve back together, and that recovery process took another eight months.

"I'm happy to say that my muscles are working again and I'm pain-free if I'm careful, (but) it still reacts very easily,” she said. "I actually have the same initial injury on my right side, which I don't want to flare up. I tried to start swimming again in early April, but the pain progressively got worse and I didn't want to reinjure myself.”

At that point, the freestyle specialist decided her brilliant career was over.

"I've been injured for over two years now, and there are so many other opportunities to take advantage of,” she said. "It really came down to the extent of my injuries and what I've gone through over the past few years to just move my arm normally, and unless my limb depended on it, I told myself I would never get another operation like that.”

Rest will never heal Gabor's injuries completely, but through careful muscle strengthening, she will be able to avoid pain and nerve reactivity.

"My injuries are things that I'll be dealing with for the rest of my life most likely,” she said. "But it's manageable if I'm smart about it.”

Gabor's outstanding career will be best remembered for her accolades as a 16-year-old in 2009, when she was at her best. That year, the Whitehorse swimmer qualified for the World Championships and went on to compete for Canada in Rome in the 4x200-metre relay and 200-metre freestyle.

Later that year, she won two gold and two bronze medals at the Canada Games in Prince Edward Island, before going on to medal in two World Cup meets – in Stockholm and Berlin.

The Porter Creek resident wasn't done there, going on to become national champion at the Canada Cup in Toronto a few weeks later.

She also holds a whopping 80 club records with the Glacier Bears.

"Looking back on my career, I'll really remember the teammates, coaches and places I've been to, and all the fun I had along the way,” Gabor told the Star. "The meets that I swam best at were the ones where I was happiest and enjoying myself the most. It's been a great 13 years … it's a chapter in my life I'll always look back on fondly, and it helped shape the person I've now become.”

She said none of her dreams would have been achieved without her longtime coach, Marek Poplawski, or the support of both the Glacier Bears and Stanford.

Gabor will continue studying international relations at Stanford, where she is focused on international security and nuclear deterrence.

"It's time to turn the page and move on to the next chapter, but I'm never going to forget the memories I made and the people I met,” she said.