When Clarisse Agbégnénou won her sixth world judo title, confirming the reigning Olympic champion as one of the athletes to watch at next year's Paris Games, the French star's smallest but greatest fan was less wild about her mother's newest gold medal than she was about her breast milk.
After a peckish day of few feeds — because mum had been busy putting opponents through the wringer — 10-month-old Athéna made amends that night.
“She didn’t let my boobs out of her mouth," Agbégnénou says. “I was like, ‘Wow, okay.’ I think it was really something for her.”
Breastfeeding and high-performance sports were long an almost impossible combination for top female athletes, torn for decades between careers or motherhood, because having both was so tough.
But that's becoming less true ahead of the 2024 Olympics, where women will take another step forward in their long march for equality, competing in equal numbers with men for the first time, and with pioneering super-moms like Agbégnénou showing that it is possible to breastfeed and be competitive.
They don't pretend that late-night feeds, broken sleep, pumping milk and having to eat for two people are easy. But some female athletes are also discovering that juggling their careers with the rigors of motherhood can pay off with powerful emotional well-being.
Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Agbégnénou said she stunned even herself by coming back so quickly from childbirth to win at the worlds in May, with Athéna in tow and expecting to be fed every few hours.
In training, Agbégnénou would stop for quick feeds when Athéna needed milk, nestling her hungry baby in the folds of her kimono, while other athletes in the judo hall paid them no mind, carrying on with their bouts.
“I was sweating on her, poor baby,” she says. “But she didn't pay attention. She just wanted to eat.”
Women who have breastfed and carried on competing say that support from coaches and sports administrators is essential. Agbégnénou credits the International Judo Federation for allowing her to take Athéna to competitions. IJF officials sounded out other competitors and coaches about whether the baby was a nuisance for them and were told, “'No, she was really perfect, we didn't hear the baby,'" she says.
“It's amazing,” she says of her peers' acceptance and support. “They are part of my fight and I am really proud of them.”
As well as Agbégnénou, three other women also asked and were allowed to nurse their babies at IJF World Tour competitions in the past six years, with arrangements made each time that enabled the moms “to care for the child and to not disturb other athletes’ preparation,” says the governing body’s secretary general, Lisa Allan. She says the IJF is now drawing up specific policies for judokas who are pregnant or postpartum because ”more and more athletes are continuing their careers whilst balancing having a family.”
The Paris Olympics' chief organizer, Tony Estanguet, says they're also exploring the possibility of providing facilities for nursing athletes at the Games.
“They should have access to their children — for the well-being of the mothers and the children,” he said in an AP interview. “The status of athletes who are young mothers needs to evolve a bit. We need to find solutions to perhaps make it easier for these athletes to bring babies" into the Olympic village where athletes are housed.
For some breastfeeding athletes, being a pioneer is part of the kick.
Two-time Olympic rowing champion Helen Glover, now aiming for her fourth Summer Games, gave birth to twins at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, breastfed them and then came out of what she'd intended to be retirement to compete at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021. Glover was the first rower to compete for Britain at the Olympics as a mother.
Glover's eldest, Logan, lost interest in her milk about the time of his first birthday, but twins Kit and Willow kept feeding to 14 months old. She says that mixing her punishing rowing training with long feeds for two babies was “very draining. It was taking every calorie I had.”
“But I could do it because it was my own time and my own choice,” she says.
“Everyone should have the choice," Glover adds. “Our bodies ... are sometimes very changed through childbirth and pregnancy and breastfeeding. So the answers are never going to be one-size-fits-all. But I think it’s really exciting that these conversations are even being had.”
For some athletes, Milk Stork has also been a help. The U.S.-based transporter ships working moms' milk when they're separated from their babies. It says it shipped milk pumped by athletes who competed at the 2021 Paralympic Games in Tokyo and also transported 21 gallons (80 liters) of milk from coaches, trainers and other support staff at the Olympics that year.
The daughter of British archery athlete Naomi Folkard was just 5 1/2-months old and breastfeeding exclusively when her mother traveled to Tokyo for her fifth and final Olympic Games.
Nursing mothers successfully pushed to be able to take babies to those Olympics, held with social distancing and without full crowds because of the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than put her daughter, Emily, through the ordeal of having to live apart from her, in a Tokyo hotel outside of the athletes' village, Folkard reluctantly left her behind with a large stock of frozen milk. She built that up over months, pumping into the night so Emily wouldn't go hungry while she was in Japan.
But that created another problem: Because Folkard's breasts had become so good at making milk, she had to pump regularly at the Games to stop them from becoming painfully swollen. She threw that milk away.
“I was having to get up in the night and pump just because my supply was so much,” she says. “It wasn’t great for performance preparation really. But I did what I had to do to be there.”
And with each drop, progress.
"There’s still a long way to go, but people are talking about it now. Women aren’t retiring to have children. They’re still competing," Folkard says.
“I feel like things are changing.”
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More AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
26 Comments
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falseflagsteve
Do we really need to read about this personal stuff, I mean who cares?
Get on with your life and stop attention seeking I say, oh yeah.
Roy Sophveason
No, it is entirely voluntary. If someone forces you to read and comment on articles, call 110.
wallace
Breastfeeding is a fact of life and never bothers me.
falseflagsteve
Roy
It is here on this site and I read it, and you point is?
falseflagsteve
wallace
This subject is personal and family matter not to be shared in the media. No doubt she has an Instagram and Tik Tok account, it’s a trend that degrades humanity.
wallace
I have no problem with sharing. Childbirth, and taking care of the newborn is a beautiful time. I have no problem if I see a mother breastfeeding her baby.
ebisen
Falseflagsteve - luckily more and more stopped thinking like you. Openly discussing and accepting breastfeeding makes things easier for really, everybody, actually. Remember, there are countries that force mothers to feed their babies in toilets, no legislation or facilities supporting breastfeeding whatsoever. Then there are countries where people are intelligent enough to fully accept and integrate it - in my experience the same places that freely accept nudity without much fuss.
By the way, Japan is somewhat in the middle, imho - very good facilities, implying the mothers have to be there in order to breastfeed, away from the public's eye. Whenever one has to do it in public then is exclusively under a cover, even by 37C outside temperature, God forbid a man sees the sight of a feeding baby!
falseflagsteve
wallace
Ok, so if it’s something you consider to see in public or speak about , what can I say? But for me, no thank you, I’m a family man you see.
ebisen
What Is wrong with a lady breastfeeding in the toilet or a private place. It’s not something I would want my dar son or partner to see in a public setting.
wallace
ffs
I am also a family man with three adult children and two grandchildren but that has nothing to do with breastfeeding, you see.
ebisen
You see nothing wrong with this, most probably that's where you should also eat for a year or so, until you answer your own dumb question
falseflagsteve
wallace and Ebisen
This things will escalate you see. Once it’s ok for a woman to display her bosoms in public it won’t be long until men can show their willies in the name of equality. This is where it’s all heading.
Jimizo
Maybe she has a Twitter account too and ‘influences’ people.
You know how these youngsters are, Steve.
falseflagsteve
Jimizo
Yes, the immoral and degenerate ones mostly who don’t want to graft for a living and are also trying to sexualise everything in society.
餓死鬼
Incredible. This should be Quote of the Day.
Roy Sophveason
In a very long line of very stupid things I have read in this site's comment sections, this one takes the stupid cake with extra frosting of stupid and a stupid cherry on top.
Jimizo
It was certainly better than the one about feeding the baby in the bogs.
wallace
falseflagsteve
wallace and Ebisen
Breastfeeding of babies has existed since the beginning of time, you see. It's part of the natural cycle of life. For thousands of years, mothers breastfed their babies without any social restrictions which have crept into some modern societies.
If you find it offensive then shame on you. Just turn your head away, you see.
Do you even know in some cities like New York women can expose their breasts in public without offense?
Breastfeeding openly is better than hiding away in toilets.
There is nothing to be ashamed of.
The fact that you find something sexual about breastfeeding says a lot about you.
garypen
I'm sure back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, folks like you used the same twisted logic to complain when women's dresses and skirts became short enough for their ankles to be visible.
Like the ones sexualizing the displaying of "bosoms" during breast feeding? Those degenerates?
FYI, so are the women who are breastfeeding their children. It's actually a requirement.
MilesTeg
Remember the disgust and horror of some when Janet Jackson accidentally exposed a boob during the SB halftime show. It's not surprising that prudes have the same reaction when a mother breastfeeds in public. How it's construed as something deviant is a reflection of their own warped, insecure sensibilities.
That being said, what's the big deal of an athlete breastfeeding during or around competing. Go ahead and do it without the fanfare of media. Do you want a medal for that too.
Linux User
Ok, so if it’s something you consider to see in public or speak about , what can I say? But for me, no thank you, I’m a family man you see.
ebisen
What Is wrong with a lady breastfeeding in the toilet or a private place. It’s not something I would want my dar son or partner to see in a public setting.
The society is constrained by traditions and religions of naked being a shame which is I think is bad for humanity that causes too biased judgments, I don't know how to fix that but just a public breastfeeding harms none and the babies are more important than my judgement. By the way the toilets are disgusting and none should or deserve to eat inside of it.
AlternativeOpinion
who talks like that? straight out of some b grade detective movie.
Women breastfeed and should not be forced to a toilet just to calm people like you. Get over yourself and learn how to be a real man.
Extra Virgin Palm Oil
If we're going to send someone off to the toilets for something "natural" let's make it the louts who cough and sneeze without covering their gobs
Wandora
This article ticks so many boxes that I lose count.
Dr.Cajetan Coelho
Mothers are pillars of Planet Earth our common home.
ebisen
Linux user, you got me wrong dude.
I'm all for supporting breastfeeding in any shape or way the mother sees fit to do it. I come from a European country where mixed nudity is common and nobody really minds about breastfeeding mothers. As such, everything is wrong with the proposal to have them breastfeed in toilets. That's plain disgusting.
Elvis is here
Lol. That's funny.