Supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics

With the emergence of the Olympic Games, athletes of any age have been provided with a welter of lifetime opportunities as they can prove their mettle to the world by excelling in the games just with their absolute perseverance and purposefulness.

While adaptability and resiliency both on and off the field are like the air for their professional career, women's sports are not the odd ones out.

But women's sports is heavily dependant on their personal lives too. Notwithstanding their outstanding achievements, as soon as they are about to give birth to a child, many people try to cast doubt on their career and ability.

There is no denying the fact that after their childbirth delivery, there comes an awful lot of changes and impacts on their body; yet the world has witnessed many great players who have maintained their reign.

A number of such star women players of the world are taking part in the Tokyo Olympic Games to the end of going on to make their country proud in their respective fields and prove themselves as champions once more time by embracing their motherhood responsibility and taking their supermom roles.

But this time supermoms had to transcend the barrier of double standards principles under the pretext of COVID-19 restrictions.

Widely revered as one of the greatest sprinters ever, during the late 2000s and 2010s, she became very successful as she helped the elevation of Jamaican athletics on the international scene.

Being assumed as one of the most decorated sprinters in history, she took motherhood responsibility in 2017 as she gave birth to her son Zyon.

She has been recognized as a truly inspirational figure as she made comeback in 2018 when she won 100m at the Kingston All Comers Meet in 11.52s.

At the moment, she is the fastest 100m sprinter in the women’s division and as one of the supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics, is considered to be one of the favourites to grab the title.

Sania Mirza

As an Indian professional tennis player and former doubles world No. 1, she has managed to win six Grand Slam titles in the span of his career.

After she participated in the Rio Olympics, in 2018, she gave birth to her son Izhaan and took a break of Go Year afterwards. But hopefully last year, before the pandemic she made a comeback as she won the Hobart Open.

At the moment, with her three-year-old son, she has continued his training and is heading to the Tokyo Olympics. While she always was on the opinion not to be away from the game at any stage of her life, with the age 34 years old she is been hoped to win a medal this year as one of the

supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics

.

Svetlana Romashina

Russian artistic swimmer Svetlana Romashina has become one of the most prominent sportswomen as soon as she started competing in this sport.

At the age of 31 years old, she has won the world championships 21 times and amazingly won five gold medals in the Olympics consisting of three successive gold medals in the team competition of the 2008, 2012 and 2016 editions of Olympics as well as two gold medals in the duet event at the London and Rio de Janeiro.

In 2017 she gave birth to her daughter and just after a short period of time, she came back to the pool. While she is all set to compete at her fourth appearance at the Olympics, she is confident enough to win another gold medal and become an example for her daughter.

Mariel Zagunis

As one of the most successful fencers in America’s sports history, with having won two gold medals in the individual event of 2004 and 2008 Olympics, she became the first athlete from the USA to win a gold medal in Olympic fencing.

The 36-year old sabre fencer has won two bronze Olympic medals in the team event in Beijing and Rio de Janeiro as well.

In spite of the fact that after the Rio Olympics, she gave birth to her daughter Sunday Noel, she managed to win the World Cup last year.

Not to mention that she played an indispensable role in getting the Olympic quota for her team. Now in her fifth appearance at the Olympics, she would try her utmost to further increase her tally of medals and prove herself as one of the supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics.

Isabelle Worth

As one of the most decorated equestrian athletes at the Games, she is world champion in dressage and has competed in five editions of Olympics (1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2016) with a total of ten medals including six gold and four silver. Therefore, she is the record holder of the most Olympic medals won by any equestrian athlete.

After that she gave birth to her son Fredrik in 2009, she did not participate in the London Olympics. But she came back to Rio and amazingly managed to win a silver and gold medal.

Now the 52-year-old supermom is expected to repeat her feat once more time at the

Tokyo Olympics 2021

with smashing her own record of winning medals either at the individual or the team event.

MC Mary Kom

Known by the Nickname of Magnificent Mary, she is assumed to be the most successful boxer in the history of the Boxing World Championships, holding the record of eight medals in the event.

Besides, she had earned the spot No. 1  of the world's female light-flyweight according to the ranking of International Boxing Association (amateur).

When the female boxing event was added to the Olympics for the first time in 2012, she was the only Indian female boxer who qualified to participate in the tournament and eventually won the bronze medal in the 51-kg flyweight category.

The 38-year old boxer is the mother of three sons while her twins were born in 2007, her other son was born in 2013 and they adopted a girl named Merilyn in 2018 as well.

Now as one of the

supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics

, she is determined to showcase a much better performance than her previous feat at the Olympics.

Oksana Chusovitina

The 46-year old Olympic gymnast has represented Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, and Germany in a span of almost three decades. She has anchored winning of 2 Olympic medals and 11 World Championship medals to her name.

While in 1999, she gave birth to her first son, Alisher; at the age of 25 she could make herself retired especially as she already had etched her name in history by competing in Sydney.

But when in 2002, Alisher was diagnosed with leukemia (blood cancer), they moved to Germany to get him treated with very expensive medical care. Therefore our supermom once again started to compete in the international tournament so as to raise money for her son.

Hopefully, not only he managed to make an impressive feat by winning her first individual Olympic medal in Beijing but also more importantly her son got healed and was declared cancer-free.

Thereupon she is still an active athlete and the only gymnast who has starred seven times in the Games and with her record eighth-time appearance at the Tokyo Olympics, she would be the oldest in 112 years.

Allyson Felix

As one of the most successful American female athletes in the world at the Track and Field events in the Olympics, she has managed to win nine medals in the Olympics, consisting of six gold and three silver medals.

In spite of the fact that as a 35-year old athlete, she gave birth to her daughter in a life-threatening delivery in November 2018, she made a comeback at the 2019 Doha World Championships and by winning two gold medals, she smashed Usain Bolt’s record of the most number of gold medals in the event.

While she is qualified to make her fifth appearance at the Olympics, she holds the chance to win medals in the 100 and 200 meters.

Alex Morgan

While US football star, Alex Morgan has represented her nation 180 times and found the back of the net 110 times, she is now an indispensable part of the US team at the Tokyo Olympics.

It suffices to indicate that she netted the match-winning goal in the 123rd minute of the semi-final match against Canada at the 2012 London Olympics.

Although she gave birth to her daughter Charlie in May 2021, she is making her third Olympic appearance and is looking to help the US team clinch their fifth Olympic title.

It is also pertinent to note that in April, she had disparaged the Tokyo organizers for not letting children under two years in Japan and underscored the importance of providing mothers with the opportunity of having their kids with them while they compete.

Kim Gaucher

As it was mentioned earlier in the first part of the article, Kim Gaucher is a Canadian professional women's basketball player who was born in Surrey and now lives in Mission.

While she took part in Rio 2016, when her daughter Sophie was born in March this year, she was in a dilemma to decide between being a breastfeeding mom or an Olympic athlete.

Therefore the 37-year-old mom took to social media on June 23 and pleaded with the public to help her to bring up a change as in one of her videos she indicated saying:

“I need the help of the internet. If anybody knows anybody, anything, let’s see if we can make a difference. It’s 2021, let’s make working moms normal".

Although apparently organizers of the Tokyo Olympics 2021 have heard her voice and are allowing athletes to bring their nursing children to the Games, this is not the case with all of them let see what has happened to Ona Carbonell.

Ona Carbonell

As a Spanish synchronized swimmer, she is the captain of the female artistic swimming team and has anchored winning many World Championship medals to her name.

She took part in the women's duet at the 2016 Summer Olympics, with Gemma Mengual, as they finishing in fourth place. She also won the silver medal in the 2012 London Olympic duet event and the bronze medal in the team event.

After she gave birth to her children this year, as one of the

supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics

she is participating in the tournament but without taking her child, Kay with her to Japan.

Although the organizers of the Tokyo Olympics just apparently let breastfeeding children travel with their mothers to Tokyo, they set very tough conditions so that Ona made up her mind to travel without her infant.

So just recently she came to social media and charged Tokyo 2020 organiser for setting the condition of not letting the breastfeeding children enter to Olympic village and not letting them even leave their room for so many days.

She called the conditions  "incompatible with performing at the Olympic Games" as her breastfeeding  Kay as many times as it is required with her going to the hotel which might be far away from the Olympic village, would undoubtedly end up putting her team at risk in the Olympic Games.

Her situation has unleashed a welter of support on social media and friends and public figures such as Saúl Craviotto, Gemma Mengual, Sara Sálamo and many others has shown their support so far.

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According to the regulation of the IOC, no family could travel to Tokyo in the face of the Pandemic, so Kim Gaucher who is a 37-year-old sportswoman from Mission, British Columbia, was forced to make a tough decision of whether to skip the Tokyo Olympics 2021 or to spend 28 days in Tokyo without her infant daughter Sophie, who was born just in March.

At the same time, international media and sponsors were allowed to travel to Tokyo and Japanese spectators could also attend the venues in half full, but she ought to be deprived of having access to her less than four-month daughter. This is quite fair, isn't it?

But hopefully, Gaucher made an emotional plea on 

to have Sophie travel with her to the Games, and to bring up a change at least in 2021 so as to make the working moms normal.

At the end of the day, Gaucher won her quest, as the IOC announced that the Tokyo 2021 Organising Committee has found a solution in terms of breastfeeding mothers and their young children entry to Japan, the solution that Gaucher called "the right decision for women in sports."

Although they can just bring their infants and their young children along in Japan but not the Tokyo Olympic village, Gaucher and many other athletes, who had recently given birth, breathed a sigh of relief as they are able now to compete and make an impact at the

Tokyo Olympics

without any concern and distractions about their infants.

In this regard let's take a look at supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics who are blessed with either infant or young children who have participated in the competition with their indomitable spirits.

Supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics

Here we would meet the Supermoms at the Tokyo Olympics who are all set to rock the tournament with their participation.

Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce