The first Sunday at the Doha world championships could in the future be remembered as an out-of-season Mother’s Day.
Jamaican 100 metres sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Chinese 20 kilometres race walker Liu Hong are hot gold medal contenders in their return to action after giving birth.
And it could even be three mums atop the podium on the day should the US pick Allyson Felix, the most successful athlete ever at the worlds, for the inaugural 4x400 metres mixed relay.
Mothers enjoying vast success in sport are nothing new, looking at tennis players such as Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters.
Athletics also has a quite a history in this, topped by Dutch legend Fanny Blankers-Koen winning four 1948 Olympic golds as a Mother-of-two.
Now disgraced Russian high jumper Anna Chicherova won the 2011 world title after giving birth; and the 2015 shot put gold medallist Christina Schwanitz of Germany is seeking more silverware in Doha as a Mother of twin boys.
Fraser-Pryce, 32, gave birth to her son in August 2017, the day after the 100m final at the London worlds, and has fully returned to top form this season in search of a fourth 100m world title.
Known as “the pocket rocket” because of her diminutive size, the double Olympic champion can claim a 10th major event gold as the joint season leader with compatriot Elaine Thompson, the Olympic 100m and 200m champ from 2016.
The fast Jamaican duo are locked on 10.73 seconds, just three-hundredths off Fraser-Pryce’s personal best, and she readily credits her son for her strong comeback.
“He gives the energy in my life and makes everything easier, and he gives me that extra motivation to keep going,” Fraser-Pryce told the BBC recently.
“I get home from practice and sometimes my son is exhausting but it’s something I wouldn’t trade for anything else because he’s actually made me better at what I do and a lot more relaxed by remembering that after a race, there’s still more to life.”
Liu, who is also 32, meanwhile has two world titles and Olympic gold in the 20km walk, the distance she will also compete in at these worlds.
She could have also opted for the 50km held later Saturday, having shown in impressive fashion that she hasn’t lost her form after maternity leave in 2017-18 when she became the first woman at the time in March to break the four-hour barrier over the distance.
Felix, 33, has not managed to reproduce her form of the past after giving birth to a daughter last November but has been picked into the US relay pool, all but certain to run in the women’s 4x400m on the closing day, October 6, but possibly also Sunday in the mixed event.
The American is the most successful athlete at the worlds with 16 medals, 11 of them gold. She is also the most successful women’s Olympian in athletics, with nine medals, including six gold.
Felix is also on the forefront of women in the sport demanding the end of lost sponsorship income because of pregnancy, a force that has now prompted equipment giants Nike to end performance-related payments for athletes when they are pregnant.
“Right now I am far from my best, working with a whole new body,” she told the Olympic Channel ahead of her ninth worlds and with a fifth Olympics in sight next year in Tokyo.
“My motivation is different now, I am doing things that my daughter can see them so that she can have a great example, she said.
Like Fraser-Pryce, Felix now has a more relaxed attitude but the same time giving birth and Motherhood “makes me feel I can get through anything.”