Leif Selby will Retire After Commonwealth Games

This morning, the first group of Australian lawn bowlers landed in Delhi to compete in the Commonwealth Games, a sport that has been a core tradition and part of the Games since the inception of the Games themselves. The team is already making news for many reasons. One is because the media is anxiously awaiting their response to the conditions in the Games Village, of which they have not yet given any. But the arrival and the presence of the team in the Games at all is mostly because one of the team’s star players, Leif Selby, will retire once he’s finished competing at the Commonwealth Games.

Leif Selby is of course, the Australian lawn bowler that has three World Championship titles under his belt, and who’s future in lawn bowling looked as though it could have been even more promising, and long. So, why is Selby walking away from the game that he seems born to play? All for the love of his daughter, 10-year-old, Jasmine. Selby has recently spoken of the long trips away from home he’s had to take, and how he’s only spent half of the year with Jasmine, every year for the past four years. Ready to give up one full-time job of professional, and brilliant, lawn bowler, Leif Selby is now ready to take on the other career of being a full-time dad.

Jasmine Selby is becoming a promising athlete in her own rite, only she is finding her sport solace in the waters of the pool rather than on the green. Jasmine currently swims for the Oak Flats Swimming Club and has recently swam in her first competition. Her dad wasn’t there as he was in Delhi practicing for the Games, and he says it was then that he made his decision to retire after the Games and focus on his daughter.

But first, Leif Selby has a goal to accomplish, and that’s to clinch the title at what he calls “the highest level of our sport.”