Athletes to receive full funding nine months after giving birth
Sport’s new guidance to end maternity policy confusion to stop pregnancy being a taboo subject for elite
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UK Sport has committed to supporting mothers in sport with a “more overt approach”, including new maternity guidance and guaranteed funding for elite athletes up to nine months postpartum.
Last year a Telegraph Sport investigation found that, while UK Sport encouraged individual sporting governing bodies to have maternity policies, it had left it up to them to determine the details, causing confusion and potential funding losses for athletes.
However, today it is set to publish updated guidance for pregnant athletes and the sports it oversees. It has also implemented a sports-wide maternity pay policy that guarantees elite athletes full funding throughout their pregnancy and up to nine months after giving birth.
It applies to those on Athlete Performance Agreements, who receive National Lottery-funded grants, and are therefore ineligible for statutory maternity pay.
As well as the guaranteed continuation of funding, which was introduced in April, the new guidance gives advice to athletes about how and when to share their pregnancy with their sport, advises the sport on next steps, provides frameworks for training pre- and postpartum, as well as extensive resources for pregnant athletes.
“At UK Sport, we really strongly believe that starting a family and being an elite athlete shouldn’t be mutually exclusive,” said chief executive Sally Munday. “We’re taking a much more overt approach to this. What we want is to ensure female athletes and sports have got the right resources at their disposal so mothers and mothers-to-be are confident they’ll be fully supported.”
Through an 18-month consultation, which included gathering expertise from athletes, sports, medical professionals and charities, UK Sport found that pregnancy must be treated differently according to the safety of the sport and the individual’s unique experience, and so avoided making the guidance “one-size-fits-all”.
Specific time frames were proposed though, including that athletes must “signal their intent” within six months of giving birth regarding plans to return to prepregnancy levels of training. At nine months, athlete potential will be assessed and confirmed to UK Sport, so they can continue accessing their funding, but this time frame could be reconsidered if an athlete were to experience complications during pregnancy or childbirth.
Five-time Olympic archer Naomi Folkard knows the obstacles for new mothers in elite sport, as she was forced to pump and freeze 80 bottles of breast milk ahead of flying to the Tokyo Olympics as she could not travel with her five-month-old daughter due to Covid-19 restrictions. She was one of the athletes who contributed to UK Sport’s consultation,
and said the new guidance was potentially life-changing.
“If this was in place 20 years ago and [sport] was a safe place to talk about pregnancy, I may have chosen to have a baby a lot earlier,” Folkard, 38, said. “In my early twenties, I felt like having a baby and being an athlete wasn’t possible. I’ve now had a baby and competed in Tokyo, and I realised it is totally possible.”
Munday agreed making motherhood an open conversation in elite sport, rather than a taboo, was a key aim. “We want to make sure female athletes can talk about starting a family in the same way they talk about what they might want to study alongside being an athlete or what they want to do as a career post being an athlete. It’s been driven by our ambition for our community to be world-leading in this space.”
UK Sport is also planning to provide further guidance on surrogacy, egg-freezing, adoption, IVF and same-sex parents.