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Tatjana started swimming at age five and began competing at age eight. She Joined Tuks High-Performance Sport School at the age of 15. - Studied BCom Financial Sciences at the University of Pretoria, and her home swimming club is also with TUKS.
- Missed qualification for the 2016 Olympic Games in the 200m breaststroke by 0.01 seconds (one-hundredth of a second).
- Became Olympic 200m breaststroke champion at Tokyo 2020, setting a then-world record of 2:18.95.
- Smith is the fifth South African to win an individual Olympic swimming title after Joan Harrison in 1952, Penny Heynes in 1996, Cameron van der Burgh in 2012 and Chad le Clos in 2012.
- On 04 November 2023, she married Joel Smith in Robertson, South Africa. Joel is the brother to Rachel Kolisi, wife of Springbok skipper and icon Siyamthanda Kolisi, Rugby World Cup winner in 2019 and 2023.
- Smith regards Usain Bolt, Penny Heyns, Chad le Clos and Michael Phelps as her sporting heroes. These four legends have 37 Olympic golds between them.
- She wants to become a quantity surveyor one day after swimming.
