WOMEN AND SPORTS LEADERSHIP

Her biggest hurdle yet

Motherhood and athletic performance have had a long, uneasy history together.

Women were not allowed to participate in a marathon until the mid-1980s (they could not run an Olympic race of more than 200 metres until the 1960s) because the men who ran sport figured it might mess with the organs they needed for reproduction.

Until the 1990s, the Canadian government considered pregnancy a career-threatening injury for female athletes. Sport Canada would scythe a female athlete’s stipend 40 per cent for a first pregnancy, 60 per cent for a second and 100 per cent for a third. It took an attempt by race walker Ann Peel to compete a month after giving birth, plus a series of Globe and Mail articles, to get the federal policy changed.

Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, the hurdler from Whitby, Ont., is glad to be living in a more enlightened era. The 28-year-old winner of an Olympic bronze medal is due to have her first baby with dentist husband Bronsen Schliep in September. They met when she was at the University of Nebraska, where she was a track star and he was a basketball player.