By Wani Martin
For years, the narrative in women’s sports was rigid: you peaked young, you pushed through pain, and when you stepped away, whether due to injury, burnout, or motherhood, you stayed away. But times have changed. From Olympians to weekend warriors, women are dismantling the myth that taking a break means walking away for good. They are returning to the sports they love, and they are thriving on their own terms.
Few stories capture the power of stepping back quite like that of Alysa Liu. At just 16, the American figure skater had already achieved what most athletes only dream of: figure skating history, national titles, and a world bronze medal. Yet behind the glittering facade was a teenager who had simply stopped having fun. The endless training, the sacrifice of a normal childhood, the pressure, it had extinguished her joy.
So, she quit.
When she returned to skating after 2 years something had shifted. At the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games, she stormed to Olympic gold, becoming the first American woman to top the podium since 2002. Her comeback wasn’t just athletic, it was monumental. She didn’t return to skating because she had to. She returned because she chose to.
Similarly, Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka fundamentally altered the sporting landscape by doing what generations of athletes were told never to do: they said no. At the Tokyo Olympics, Biles, widely considered the greatest gymnast of all time, withdrew due to the “twisties”, a dangerous mental block that robbed her of spatial awareness mid-air. Osaka, citing depression and anxiety, stepped away from tennis’s biggest stages. Rather than destroying their careers, these pauses sparked a global conversation on the importance of mental health. They proved that prioritising the mind isn’t weakness, but it is the ultimate form of self-preservation.
While the headlines feature gold medals, the reality for most women returning to sport is quieter, scarier, and far more relatable. It involves scar tissue, both physical and emotional, and the painstaking work of trusting a body that once let you down.
Vanessa Chefer Spinola knows this intimately. The Brazilian heptathlete who competed at the highest level, including the 2016 Olympics, had her career nearly derailed in 2013 by a brutal knee surgery. “I was in such a high level, getting to the 2012 Olympics, and then I got the knee surgery,” she recalls. “It was really, really hard for me.”
The recovery was a year of silence. Training eight hours a day only to be reduced to
Vanessa Chefer Spinola
nothing. She lost ten kilos in a week after her surgery. “I went to therapy because I
had a really big breakdown,” she admits.
But the hardest part wasn’t the physio, it was the fear. When she finally returned to training, the long jump was her biggest challenge. It requires explosive force on the knee that had just been rebuilt. “I was really scared,” she says. “In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, ‘This is my surgery.’ I was always trying to protect the knee.”
Spinola eventually made it back to elite form, proving that mental scars can heal as thoroughly as physical ones. In July 2016, just weeks before representing Brazil at the Rio Olympics, she set the Brazilian heptathlon record with a score of 6,188 points, a testament to how far she had come from the fear and doubt of her knee surgery.
Today, she has transitioned from Olympic athlete to mother and personal trainer. Having undergone a C-section, she understands that returning postpartum is a different beast entirely. Her advice to women afraid to start again is simple yet profound:
“Just go and try. The beginning is very hard. Your body will never come back to where it was before, but it is still a very good version. Be kind to yourself. Consistency is the key.”
To understand why so many women step away in the first place, and what might bring them back, research from Women in Sport offers a crucial wider lens. Sarah Chaffey, Communications Manager at Women in Sport, draws on data showing that disengagement is rarely a single moment, but a series of predictable points where sport stops fitting around women’s lives, rather than adapting to them.
“Women are less active than men at every stage of their lives, and this gap widens with age,” she notes, citing data from Sport England. The first major drop-off comes in the teenage years. Puberty, periods, and heightened school pressures all make it hard to see where sport fits in.
Later, pregnancy and early motherhood become significant turning points, with inconsistent guidance on physical activity. Women are also more likely than men to shoulder the majority of unpaid household and caring responsibilities, reducing their time, energy, and access to sport. Body image and fear of judgement play an equally powerful role in whether a woman dares to return.
According to Women in Sport’s research, 65% of girls don’t like others watching them while exercising, and 45% feel they don’t have the ‘right’ body shape for sport. “As long as the focus remains on what women and girls look like, rather than what they can achieve, the odds will be stacked against them,” Chaffey says, “making it harder to stay in sport or return after time away.”
For a long time, women navigating these comebacks did so in a vacuum, forced to choose between elite sport and starting a family. That is finally changing. In the UK, governing bodies are waking up to the fact that supporting female athletes requires specific, dedicated policies.
It’s not just the UK. In the USA, non-profits like For All Mothers+, founded by Olympic medallist Alysia Montaño, provide grants for childcare, lactation support, and race deferrals, helping mothers return to sport without having to choose between family and competition.
Change is visible across the globe. IRONMAN Oceania introduced a pregnancy deferral policy allowing athletes to defer entry to the major triathlon event for up to two years, with similar policies now adopted into other elite sporting organisations. In the United States, USA Track & Field offers a USATF maternity grant and allows postpartum athletes to use previous qualifying times for up to 12 months after giving birth.
Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee now recommends that all governing bodies implement maternity policies, including ranking protection and flexible qualification windows.
For those returning after injury or mental breaks, organisations like Sport England’s ‘This Girl Can’ campaign are using community to rebuild confidence. In partnership with Strava, they launched ‘Make Your Comeback’ in June 2023.
According to Sport England’s campaign data, seven million women aged 14 to 60 have taken a break from activity since the pandemic. The campaign reached 1.8 million women, and thousands have found joy in movement again, with more than 34,000 women completing the challenge.
Meanwhile, in the USA, Shooting Touch serves over 500 girls in Boston and 3,000 women in Rwanda through free basketball programming, using sport to create community and opportunity for those who might otherwise drop out. These organizations prove that targeted support, not just elite visibility, is what helps women find their way back.
The modern female athlete is no longer just a performer. She now makes her own decisions. Looking back, Spinola wishes she had known one thing earlier: “Before, I was very black and white. I need to train eight hours a day. Now, I would say just be easier on yourself. You are not a machine.”
The comeback story isn’t just about winning gold. It is about the mother lacing up her trainers for the first time in five years, the former prodigy finding joy in a hobby, and the injured athlete trusting her knee on the long jump runway. They are all proof that in sport, as in life, the final chapter is never written by your break, but by your return.
