The flying supermoms

Serena Williams TENNIS

Williams is among the most decorated tennis players of all time, winning 23 Grand Slams. The last one of these, the 2017 Australian Open, is perhaps the most impressive when we consider that she was 20 weeks pregnant while playing it.

The American gave birth to a daughter, Olympia, in September next year, and returned to the tennis courts within a few months. By July, she was playing Wimbledon, and riding a wave of emotion and enthusiastic crowd support, reached the final.

Alex Morgan FOOTBALL

We’ve identified Morgan as a footballer, but she is also a published author, has produced a TV show (based on the book she wrote), and has acted in a film or two. She has managed all this while balancing her sporting career and motherhood.

After taking a maternity break that neatly coincided with the pandemic, Morgan returned to football in November 2020, and was impressive enough in the coming few months to earn a call-up to the US team for the Tokyo Olympics, which went on to win bronze. Then, in the next season, Morgan, now 34, scored 15 goals to win the Golden Boot as the league’s top scorer. It was her best goalscoring season ever. “Motherhood makes me feel more balanced all around,” she once said. And given these statistics, it’s easy to see why.

Sally Chepyego MARATHON

Chepyego has been a marathon athlete in every sense of the term. Just going by longevity, her career stretches nearly two-and-a-half decades. In 2001, she claimed gold at the Under-18 World Championships, while competing barefoot. In 2011, three years after giving birth to her son Brian, she completed a half-marathon in 70 minutes. But it was the 2017 birth of her daughter, the not-ironically-named Brilliant, that took her running to a different plane. She finished in the top three at Berlin 2019 and Tokyo 2020 and won Frankfurt 2022.

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce TRACK AND FIELD

Two years after the birth of her first son Zyon, the Jamaican sprinter claimed gold at the 2019 World Championships in Doha. Then 32, she became the first mother to win the World Championship 100-metre race, dedicating her win as “a victory for motherhood”.
And earlier this year, she participated in a parents’ day run at her son’s school, coming first in what must have been the most one-sided run ever. “They haven’t banned me yet,” she quipped later.

Helen Glover ROWING

Britain’s greatest ever rower, Helen Glover (a catchy tune if nothing else), was already a two-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion and the World No.1 in 2016. That’s when she decided to get married, have kids, basically ease into retirement. But by 2021, something clicked and she took up the oars again.

Though she fell outside the medal spots at the Tokyo Games that year, she did win medals at the World Championships in 2022 and 2023 and also qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics .