One of the most significant personal issues that confront elite female athletes is the balance between pursuing a career in professional sport with aspirations to start a family. For some athletes, it is not on their radar during their professional career however for others it is a major life decision that they do not wish to postpone.
In recent years, we have seen athletes like 2019 world champion Katie Zaferes take a pregnancy break after the Tokyo Olympics and 2012 Olympic champion Nicola Spirig take maternity breaks in her athletic career.
One thing that stands out about both Zaferes and Spirig is that they are two standout names in sports, with a plethora of international medals. As a result of their success, they were well-positioned to take a period away from the sport.
Not everyone, however, can be at the peak of the sport. To take a maternity break would therefore be detrimental to a career more often than not.
The big issues facing pregnant athletes are funding and rankings. If sponsorship and support from national federations cannot be assured, then athletes will lose their livelihoods to have a child. World Triathlon cannot do a lot for that first issue, however they have created a new policy to address the rankings situation.
When the Executive Board of World Triathlon met in Abu Dhabi, they approved a series of updates to the sport’s rule book that will enter force from 1 January 2023. The biggest takeaway is a new maternity policy. The policy “will freeze the rankings of athletes from the moment they announce their pregnancy until the child is two years old, to facilitate their return to competition”.
This is a big step forward by World Triathlon and creates a framework for athletes to balance careers with thoughts of starting a family.
Rather than having to chase points all around the world, athletes will be able to return at the level they had worked to achieve. It is this absence of an additional penalty for maternity absences that makes the policy so appealing. Returning to elite sport is a challenge in itself. After any break from sport, it can be a psychological challenge to try to return to former levels, not least after the physical toll of childbirth.
Additional Rule Changes
The new rules to be implemented from 2023 also include new regulations over the use of running shoes. From next year, the use of running shoes will be adapted to follow the rules implemented by World Athletics. This, too, seems a sensible move to harmonise triathlon with other elite sport and reduces the scope in the coming years that the sport will fall into the trap of debates over “super shoes”.
This change follows an earlier decision to eliminate tri-bars (or aero-bars) from the draft-legal field in 2023. This decision will bring World Triathlon more in step with UCI policy.
