Background
Dittrich is also the daughter of Ulrike Bauer, an Austrian record holder in both 100 and 200 m breaststroke, and Kurt Dittrich, a sprint butterfly swimmer who competed at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
Dittrich is also the daughter of Ulrike Bauer, an Austrian record holder in both 100 and 200 m breaststroke, and Kurt Dittrich, a sprint butterfly swimmer who competed at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
At age sixteen, Dittrich made her international debut at the 2006 European Junior Swimming Championships in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where she captured two medals, silver and bronze, in the women"s butterfly and individual medley (both 200 m), posting her time of 2:12.84 and 2:17.86, respectively. Dittrich qualified for the women"s 200 m butterfly at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, by clearing a FINA B-cut of 2:10.86 from the International Vienna Championships in Vienna. She challenged six other swimmers on the second heat, including South Africa"s Kathryn Meaklim and Singapore"s Tao Li.
She came only in second place by 0.44 of a second behind Meaklim, with an Austrian record-breaking time of 2:09.85.
Dittrich, however, narrowly missed out of the semifinals by less than a second, as she placed seventeenth out of 36 swimmers in the preliminary heats. She challenged seven other swimmers on the second heat, including fellow two-time Olympians Khoo Cai Lin of Malaysia and Lynette Lim of Singapore.
She came only in fifth place by less than 0.03 of a second behind Mexico"s Patricia Castañeda Miyamoto, with a time of 8:45.41. Dittrich, however, failed to advance into the final, as she placed twenty-eighth in the overall rankings.
Shortly after the Olympics, Dittrich announced her retirement from swimming career.
She is a multiple-time Austrian champion, a five-time national record holder, and also, a current member of Simmering Swimming Club (German: Schwimmverein Schwechat Simmering) in Schwechat. In the same year, she won another bronze medal in the same discipline at the FINA Youth World Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with a time of 2:13.92, four tenths of a second (040) behind runner-up Jemma Lowe of Great Britain. At the 2010 European Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Dittrich achieved a sixth-place finish in the women"s 1500 m freestyle, posting a national record-breaking time of 16:23.63. Four years after competing in her first Olympics, Dittrich qualified for her second Austrian team, as a 22-year-old, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, by attaining a B-standard entry time of 8:39.67 in the women"s 800 m freestyle.
