At the Tokyo Games, held in the summer of 2021, Ona Carbonell (33) denounced in a video that the organization had not allowed her to bring her one-year-old son Kai. The synchronized swimmer regrets that being separated from the baby for a month forced her to stop breastfeeding him. Since then, and especially since she retired last May, the swimmer with the most medals in the history of the world championships has fought to reconcile motherhood with elite sport.
Ona Carbonell participated on Thursday in a talk Motherhood, the pending challenge of women’s sports, organized by the Fertility Barcelona assisted reproduction unit of the Quirónsalud Hospital and the Teknon Medical Center. The meeting took place at the Juno House women’s club and Claudia Galicia (37), a skier and mountain biker, participated alongside the swimmer; Carlota Planas, women’s soccer agent and Cayetana Barbed, assisted reproduction specialist.
Barbed highlighted that athletes delay the issue of motherhood because their career is short, but a woman’s fertile age coincides with her sporting prime and “when they retire and want to be mothers it is difficult for them due to the stress to which their body has been subjected.” during the sporting stage, that is why gynecological advice is necessary.” In this sense, Claudia Galicia, who a year ago was the mother of Julia and Paula, said that “I have passed hundreds of doping controls, but none gynecological. Like many athletes, I did not have my period and they limited themselves to telling me that it was normal, and it is not true, so I had to undergo harsh treatments to become a mother.
Carbonell confessed that since he was 14 he has been going to a psychologist, “but when I got pregnant and after Kai’s birth I returned to training, I needed another type of psychological help.” That is why the maternity and sports commission that leads within the Spanish Olympic Committee demands that there be specialist professionals such as gynecologists to advise athletes “it is important that they do not feel alone and that they do not have to give up anything.” One of the points that the swimmer and mother of two children (Kai and Teo) also considers essential is that during the time they have to be retired, their ranking and sponsorships are maintained.
Another of Ona Carbonell’s requests, which she hopes can be carried out at the Paris Games this summer, is that babies from 0 to 18 months can travel with their mothers and that there be breastfeeding rooms. In this sense, Carlota Planas explained that in the last women’s soccer World Cup (which Spain won) for the first time the players were able to be accompanied by their families and children “and that influenced the spirit.”
Among the audience attending the talk on motherhood was former swimmer Maria Pau Corominas, who competed in the Mexico Games in 1968. “One of the Russian swimmers had a son and we considered her a weirdo, because it was not possible for her to be an athlete.” and mother,” he joked. “Now my priority is my daughters – explained Claudia Galicia – and that is why I only do one-day races, but I optimize my time better in training.”
And Ona Carbonell ended with a phrase from tennis player Naomi Osaka (26), who gave birth to her first daughter in July: “Before I saw motherhood as an obstacle and now I see it as a stimulus.”
