Australian Olympic medallist Rice sick with pneumonia

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

BRISBANE, Australia (AFP) — Australian swimming star Stephanie Rice, who won three gold medals and smashed world records at the Olympics, is sick with pneumonia, she said two days after returning from Beijing.

Rice, 19, has curtailed a national tour aimed at selling an underwear brand she and former boyfriend and fellow Olympian Eamon Sullivan promote after being diagnosed with the respiratory illness.

"(The doctors said) I have the early stages of pneumonia, which a lot people probably have," she said Thursday during a promotional appearance in the eastern city of Brisbane.

She said she had begun feeling ill towards the end of the Olympics.

"I haven't been well since Beijing and it's gotten a lot worse since coming home," she said in front of a...