How 4 Pro Athletes Balance Parenthood With Big Olympic and Paralympic Dreams

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Middle-distance runner Elle St. Pierre likes to win—and sometimes she does. So when the Tokyo Olympian failed to achieve the finals within the 1,500 meters on the 2022 World Indoor Championships, she told reporters she “didn’t feel like herself.”

It was only later that she’d reveal the explanation: She was eight weeks pregnant together with her son, Ivan.

“It was something I knew in my heart I at all times wanted,” the New Balance–sponsored runner tells SELF. And due to athletes before her, she didn’t feel like she needed to attend until her running profession was over to make it occur.

After Ivan was born in March 2023, St. Pierre became certainly one of a swelling group of skilled runners returning to the game postpartum, including Olympians Molly Huddle, Rachel Smith, and Brenda Martinez. Many have turn into friends and confidantes, including fellow New Balance runner Abby (D’Agostino) Cooper, who had a baby a month earlier.

The two connected more deeply while attending a high-altitude training camp in Flagstaff, Arizona. “We were on the identical schedule, wanting to get back to our babies quickly after a workout while other people would normally exit to dinner,” St. Pierre says. En route, they’d trade tales about life as each a competitor and a mom, helping St. Pierre feel less alone and in addition more confident in her decisions and her future.

She also credits her family for his or her role in her busy day-to-day. When she travels from her home—a working dairy farm in Vermont—to camp, St. Pierre brings extra hands together with her to assist with Ivan, including, at times, a babysitter, her husband Jamie, her mother, and her mother-in-law. That way, she will deal with training when she’s on the track or roads, but still have him nearby when she’s done together with her sessions.

Thanks partly to the firm foundation beneath her and her different avenues of support, St. Pierre is back on the right track (literally). She returned to racing on the fifth Avenue Mile last September, running a time of 4:23 to put seventh. At the Millrose Games in February, she ran 4:16.41 to interrupt her own record within the indoor mile; in March, two days before Ivan’s first birthday, she won a gold medal and set a brand new American record of 8:20.87 within the 3,000 meters on the 2024 World Indoor Championships.

Afterward, she gave an interview to NBC’s Lewis Johnson, Ivan in her arms. The race hurt, but not as bad as her 12-hour labor, she said. When he asked what it meant for her to be there together with her husband, son, and the remaining of her family, she beamed.

“It’s a win for all of us. They’re those that got me here,” she said. And their support was about greater than babysitting or handling chores across the farm—it was also about confidence in her athletic ability. “When I told them I used to be pregnant, they only didn’t blink a watch; they knew I can be back. I needed that.”

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