A baby under time pressure
How sprinter Cindy Roleder used the Olympic break for a child
© Fotostand / imago images
When is the perfect time to get pregnant in professional sports? If the Olympic Games are postponed by a year due to the corona pandemic – at least that was the thought of hurdle sprinter Cindy Roleder. Now the young mother is working on her sporty comeback.
When the postponement of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo by one year was announced last year, the shock for many professional athletes was great. However, Cindy Roleder, hurdler and vice world champion in 2015, reacted differently. In the time gained, she had a chance: "I won't be competing this year and there is a wonderful reason for that," the athlete announced in July 2020 on her Instagram -Channel. She and her husband had used the unexpected free time and devoted themselves to family planning. They hadn't wanted to wait another year. Timing was everything: "If it works quickly, then you can be fit again by Tokyo 2021 – and luckily nature has played along," Roleder told "Bild". Roleder's daughter was born on January 1, 2021, seven months before the opening of the Summer Olympics.
The dream of Tokyo
For the professional athlete, the decision to have a baby was never a decision against Tokyo. The 31-year-old also had the big goal of her third participation in the Olympics firmly in view during pregnancy: Sport was part of her regular routine until two days before the birth. While she still trained relatively normally in the first three months of her pregnancy and could continue to run hurdles and sprint, Roleder adapted her exercise program to her growing baby bump over time. In the third trimester, she did lunges and squats for an hour a day.
Ten days after the birth, Roleder returned to training; she now trains once a day for four hours. The 31-year-old has already overcome the first hurdles on the tartan track: seven pieces with a height of 78 centimeters – in the real competition there will be ten pieces with a height of 84 centimeters. Step by step towards a sporty comeback: "As far as strength and endurance are concerned, that comes back relatively quickly, I was quite astonished. Now it depends, can I get the speed back?"
Germany's "fastest mom"
Since November last year, the young mother has been recording her experiences during pregnancy, sports and nutrition tips and her way to Tokyo on a separate Instagram profile. As the "fastest mom", Cindy Roleder wants to show that professional sport and being a mom are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The professional athlete almost reached her competitive weight four months before the Summer Olympics: Roleder has already lost 15 of the 20 kilos she gained during pregnancy. However, the last three and a half kilos of the competition weight should remain for the time being: The young mother is breastfeeding and does not want to endanger this by dieting.
The 31-year-old will have her first athletic test run at the end of May. On May 21, she competes at the International Athletics Meeting in Dessau, two weeks later the mandatory date for Olympic candidates at the German Championships in Braunschweig.
Source: "Image" / Instagram
This article originally appeared on stern.de.