It is not so often that women athletes take time off to engage in the ancient sacrament of pregnancy and childbirth and still return afterwards to dominate their sports. Several stars have done this down the years and we capture it all in this engaging and more-thancursory package. Experts, ranging from physiologists, human kinetics practitioners to physical and heath education specialists, provide facts and figures to illuminate the piece. The athletes themselves also give firsthand knowledge and personal experiences to capture all the sides.Mary Onyali-Omagbemi was for the better part of the 1980s and 1990s Africa’s number one and one of the world’s top women sprinters, dominating the 100 and 200 metres events.
In 1997, a year after becoming the first African woman to win an individual medal in the Olympic Games’ 200 metres event, she took a break from competitive sports to give birth to her first child. When she returned to competition in 1998, at the age of 30, she won a 100 metres bronze at the 8th IAAF World Cup in Athletics, in Johannesburg, and gold at the African Championships, in Dakar, both in a time of 11.05 seconds; same time she had run two years earlier in one of her heats at the Atlanta Olympics.
Onyali-Omagbemi, who went on to become the first Nigerian to compete at four successive Olympic Games, later in the year 2000, at the age of 32, came two hundredth of a second short of her best ever time of 10.97 seconds she had accomplished seven years earlier at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany.
And she felt at the time, and still continues to believe, that she was able to accomplish that feat as a result of her decision to start a family. “I think it was definitely due to the rise in natural hormones such as testosterone that occurs in the woman’s body while she is pregnant. It makes you stronger because the hormonal level in your body has been increased naturally, not by drugs, but by the pregnancy,” said Onyali-Omagbemi in an interview with Saturday Telegraph.
“Being pregnant is like 10 times the training requirement, so your body really goes through the highest test of stress. And for you to have survived it and given birth to the child and relieved of that stress, when you come back to training and doing your normal training regimen it is like a piece of cake because you have been there and done that.” Funke Oshonaike, a veteran of five Olympic Games, is without a doubt Africa’s most successful female table tennis player, and continues to get the better of younger adversaries even at the ripe old age of 39.
At the All-Africa Games in Abuja, in 2003, Oshonaike, at the age of 28, and four months after delivering her first child, emerged as Nigeria’s best athlete of the 2003 Games after clinching four gold medals. And the legendary table tennis player told Saturday Telegraph that her performance level back at the Abuja Games was boosted by the bodily changes she went through during and after childbirth. “I honestly believe that was the reason,” she said. “It worked for me just like it did for many other athletes across the world.
When I got married, my father and some other relatives asked whether that was the end of my career as an athlete. “The same question came up when I was pregnant, but I was determined to continue even after that just because I was aware many other athletes did so and achieved good results. “At the Abuja 2003 All-Africa Games I was in camp with my four-month-old baby, and I worked so hard in training. I also noticed that I could endure more; that I didn’t get tired easily.
And so with that I won four gold medals for Nigeria. That was the best moment of my career and I did not achieve it as a teenager but as a nursing mother.” She added: “It is a general thing for women. If one could work hard after childbirth, and put those hormones to good use, one could get better results in sports. I knew it before I experienced it and that was why I never thought twice about getting pregnant. It is a special gift from God to women.”
Much ado about testosterone
Testosterone, although mainly associated with men, is also produced by women although at substantially lower levels than is to be found in men. In women, it is important for bone strength and development of lean muscle mass and strength. It also leads to an increase in energy level and sports organising bodies, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), have on a number of occasions suspended or barred women athletes for having unusually high levels of testosterone. One of such athletes was South Africa’s Caster Semenya who, after winning the 800 metres final at the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin was prevented from competing in athletics events for a year after tests showed she had unusually high levels of testosterone.
During pregnancy, a woman’s ovaries secrete an increased level of testosterone to go with the estrogens they usually produce. But being pregnant transforms a woman’s body in other ways. Pregnancy puts the athlete out for at least a few months while her body undergoes dramatic changes, including considerable weight gain. So to come right back to the top is nothing less than miraculous. “It was definitely a miracle,” recalled Nigeria’s former goalkeeper, Ann Agumanu- Chiejine, who at the age of 27, in 2001, had the first of four children.
A few months earlier, in September 2000, she was in goal for Nigeria’s Super Falcons at the football event of the Sydney Olympic Games. Unbeknownst to her she was four months pregnant; not that anyone watching her save the Super Falcons with the ferocity and agility of a lioness from potentially humiliating defeats at the hands of China, Norway and the United States of America would have had any inkling of such. And, though, it may not come as a surprise that many women athletes remain active during the early stages of their pregnancy, what may be surprising is that a great number of these women report some sort of boost during this fragile period. “I had no idea that I was pregnant at the time,” recalled Agumanu-Chiejine in an interview with Saturday Telegraph. “Had I known maybe I wouldn’t have gone to the Olympics.
But looking back I was in the form of my life.” She added: “I went for every ball; I never got tired; my energy level was higher and it was only much later after the Olympics that I realised that all that happened to me was as a result of the pregnancy.” During the first three months of pregnancy, women produce a surplus of red blood cells and hormones in order to support the developing foetus. These red blood cells are rich in oxygen-carrying haemoglobin and can improve the body’s ability to carry oxygen to the muscles.
The increased blood flow can potentially give pregnant women an advantage in aerobic capacity and the ability to run longer, swim faster, or play harder with increased stamina levels. “During this period and for the remain-der of the pregnancy, women experience an increase in the hormones progesterone, oestrogen, and testosterone, which naturally gives them more strength,” said Dr Emeka Igwe, a gynaecologist with the Enugu State Ministry of Health. “They will also experience a rise in the level of relaxin produced by the ovaries and the placenta.” Relaxin is vital in the process of childbirth as it relaxes the woman’s pelvic ligaments and softens and widens the cervix ahead of delivery.
More than a Myth
Elite women athletes have long shared similar stories about the mythical bounce they get in performance during and after pregnancy. Though there have been no concrete scientific studies, this trend may not be a myth after all, with some doctors theorising that the act of giving birth itself makes women not only physically stronger, but also mentally more alert, granting them that competitive edge.
“That has been the case for a while, but it is neither here nor there,” said Professor Ademola Abass, an exercise physiology Professor at the University of Ibadan. “We have seen elite athletes who after child-birth come back and still maintain their status, while we have also seen those who after childbirth decided to opt out from active sports participation.”
Dr Christian Emeruwa, a physical and health education expert with the Nigeria Football Federation added: “There have been researches that have shown that some athletes are still able to perform well at elite competitions even by the fourth month of pregnancy. “There are some schools of thought though that have done extensive studies regarding women who after giving birth come back to do better than their past records.
But we have not been able to really establish physiologically if it’s as a result of the birth of a child or as a result of sheer determination by the athlete to surpass her previous mark.” He added: “But it is neither here nor there. We have some that it works out for and some who just decide to pack their bags and stick to motherhood.” Dr Adeyemi Awopetu, an Exercise Physiologist and Associate Professor at the University of Lagos told Saturday Telegraph: “The truth is that there is no physiological basis for it. It is not that childbirth brings in extra energy for performance.
“The researches that we have show that when an athlete gets pregnant, in the early stage, there would be an upsurge of red blood cells production and because of the increase in the volume of blood we have higher energy metabolism and there could be higher performance.”
“But if you actually want to attribute it to childbirth, you have to take somebody who started training after having a child, which is the only way you can now say it is because of childbirth, and then take somebody who started before child birth and then compare the result.
An athlete who has been training before having a child has a lot of things to fall back on including the experience before the childbirth and in addition to the physiological maturation, we also have skill maturation and experience. He added: “But not all carry the pregnancy to the latter stages, as some could decide to terminate the pregnancy before it results into childbirth.”
Abortion doping
It might sound bizarre but Dr Awopetu’s theory actually holds water. Back in 1988, at the height of the infamous illegal doping programmes of the former Soviet bloc nations, the performance benefits from a pregnancy were so hyped that ‘abortion doping’, as this strange and illogical process came to be known, became the topic of a world conference on anti-doping. Then-IOC vice president, Belgium’s Prince Alexandre de Merode, reported he knew of several Eastern European athletes who would induce pregnancy for the performance benefits and then get an abortion.
“I heard of such back in the days,” recalled Onyali-Omagbemi. “Most of the stories centred on the East Germans but they were mostly rumours. No one, to the best of my knowledge, actually came out to confirm it.” In the 1960s, East Germany started to dominate the Olympic Games and captured a large number of world records. It was later uncovered that the government had forced many athletes to take steroids as a result of which in 2005, 190 former East German competitors filed a law suit against the government in an attempt to get recognition for these abuses.
But in the 1970s, rumours began to circulate that the East Germans were forcing their athletes to get pregnant before competitions in order to take advantage of the induced hormonal changes. The IOC investigated the issue but was unable to discover anything sinister on the part of the East Germans. But in the 1980s, the old rumours resurfaced and became known as the ‘abortion doping scandal’ and were in 1988 once again investigated by the IOC. The allegations were however never proven to be true. And even though Prince Merode claimed he knew a Swiss doctor who was performing the procedure, the IOC determined that it was not illegal.
Regarding the incident Greg Whyte, Professor of applied sport and exercise science at Liverpool’s John Moores University, in a 2010 interview with The Times, stated: “It is certainly viable that pregnancies were enforced and then terminated as part of the old East German regime, some doctors have claimed they know that is the case. “Testing for abortion doping is virtually impossible, as the only things to test for are the athletes’ blood and hormonal levels,” Dr Emeruwa told Saturday Telegraph.
“If an athlete ever gets accused of abortion doping she could simply argue that the pregnancy was not induced for the temporary physiological benefits. So there is no way of proving it.” But the fact remains that several marks have been set by women athletes shortly after giving birth, especially to their first child.
Onyali-Omagbemi ran her fastest time in years shortly after the birth of her daughter. American long-distance runner Kara Goucher ran her best ever time at the 2011 Boston Marathon seven months after giving birth. Britain’s Paula Radcliffe also won the 2007 New York City Marathon less than 10 months after having a kid. Radcliffe’s case is all the more phenomenal in that she trained throughout pregnancy, even running the day before going into labour, before going on to win a marathon after childbirth. And, there was also Oshonaike, who dominated the African table tennis scene following the birth of her first child, not forgetting tennis great, Kim Clijsters, who after retiring from tennis in 2007 had her first child a year later before returning to competitive tennis in 2009 and won the US Open title that year.
In 2010, the Belgian defended her US Open title, and in 2011, she became the second woman in history to win three tennis Grand Slams as a mother, going on to become the first mother to be ranked number one in the WTA rankings. But, for all the benefits there can be, there are plenty of drawbacks to serious training after pregnancy such as recovery if the pregnancy wasn’t easy, and an increased risk of certain kinds of injuries. Bone density can be lower and ligaments and tendons are often stretched out and overly-flexible, something Onyali-Omagbemi learned the hard way towards the end of her illustrious career.
“We are talking about human performance, not a machine,” said Dr Awopetu. “The human body does not work that way. After childbirth, they even need a period to recuperate; they have to recover from that. “Have you seen a woman who just had a child, either through normal delivery or caesarean section?
If it is through caesarean section, it takes some time because the womb has to heal; the surgical opening has to heal before they can return to training. “The pain of childbirth for women is an extreme pain, and not something that could enhance performance.
They have to recover from that and start training gradually before they can get to their peak again; it is not something that is magical or something that happens overnight,” added Dr Awopetu. Dr Awopetu is spot on about that: it is not something that happens overnight. But for some reasons yet to be proven, it does happen to a certain class of remarkable women.
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