Balancing Act

A year and a half after becoming a mother, Canadian heptathlon champion Jessica Zelinka is back at the Commonwealth Games and looking to finish what she started in 2006.

Last Updated: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 | 3:04 PM ET

By Chris Iorfida, CBC Sports

Canadian heptathlete Jessica Zelinka has added an eightyh, lifelong event in addition to her seven in track and field: motherhood. (Chris Young/Canadian Press)

The way Jessica Zelinka sees it, she could use the breaks that may be coming her way at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October.

You see, a few challenges have been thrown her way since the last Commonwealth meet four years ago in Melbourne.

Zelinka "could smell the medals," as she puts it, after getting off to a terrific start through four of seven heptathlon events in Melbourne. But she lost focus, and a subpar performance in the long jump begat one in the javelin. The Calgary athlete finished strongly in the 800 metre race, the final event, but ended up 56 points shy of a podium finish.

Zelinka, who grew up in London, Ont., learned from that lesson to the Pan American Games the following year, a prelude to setting a national record of 6,490 points while finishing fifth at the 2008 Olympics. It was unquestionably one of the best Canadian performances at Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing.

Typically, a lot of athletes soon enter a down phase at that point in the quadrennial after working so hard toward a goal.

But Zelinka was snapped out of an emerging funk in short order: she found out she was pregnant.

Daughter Anika was born in May 2009, her sister's wedding was a few months later, and Zelinka followed down the aisle in October to wed Nathaniel Miller, longtime national water polo team member.

Almost exactly a year after giving birth, Zelinka was back competing with the likes of reigning world champion Jessica Ennis, the new queen of the sport.

So while many athletes have bemoaned the fact the Commonwealth Games will be held in October, weeks after the end of their season, the timing is great for Zelinka.

"I can still increase my training volume in these weeks to come instead of just maintaining [like the others]," she told CBCSports.ca on Aug. 26.

The Commonwealth Games will be her fourth and highest profile competition since returning to the track following Anika's birth.

Zelinka did some light pool work and walking until resuming training in earnest, while still breastfeeding, in late October 2009 with coach Les Gramantik.

"I didn't know how my body would react to intensive training," she said. "We were doing a lot of drill-type stuff instead of hitting the weights."

"We were just really playing it by ear," she added.

Zelinka said with the sincerity only a high-performance athlete could pull off that she didn't want to rush getting back to the track, a five-month waiting period that would undoubtedly be a mind-boggling concept to most first-time mothers.

High performance moms reach the podium

What Zelinka is trying to accomplish is relatively rare, although the development of more sport opportunities for women in recent years has meant there have been some high-profile athletes returning to elite levels of performance after giving birth.

That list includes tennis player Kim Clijsters, Canadian women's hockey star Becky Kellar and Lisa Leslie of the WNBA. Clijsters was the first to win a Grand Slam event after childbirth in over 30 years, partly reflecting the fact that teen girls predominated in her sport for a large part of the 1980s and 1990s.

Margaret Simpson-Senya of Ghana, a 2002 Commonwealth Games medallist in the heptathlon, had a child in 2006 and went on to amass nearly 6,300 points at the 2007 All-Africa Games.

She won the African championships in Kenya this summer, setting up the possibility that two moms could be battling for the Commonwealth top spot in October.

(None can match, or would want to, the singular chronology of heptathlete Lyudmyla Blonska. The Ukrainian athlete gave birth in 2001, tested positive for steroids in 2003, gave birth in 2006, and tested positive for steroids in 2008, losing her Olympic heptathlon silver medal and earning a lifetime ban.)

Zelinka of course is not just coming back to a multi-faceted single sport, but an athletics competition that includes seven distinct events: the 100 metre hurdles, high jump, shot put, a 200 metre sprint, long jump, javelin, and the 800.

There was no particular discipline that required a disproportionate share of reps since her return, but the demands of child care have meant that sessions are more condensed, with two-a-day's a thing of the past.

She looked at her first serious competition in late May in Goetzis, Austria, as a blank slate and ended up finishing with 5,962 points, which put her in 12th. The only representative of a Commonwealth country ahead of her was the winner, Ennis.

"My throws weren't far off of my personal bests, so that was a surprise," she said, referring to the shot put and javelin. "At that point I hadn't done a lot of strength training."

The rhythm that a heptathlete needs through the starts and stops of a two-day event also felt natural, she said. Always strongest on the track, the only thing holding her back in the running events was rust.

She took a more "business-like" approach to the national championships in July in Toronto and won for a fifth time in her career.

Her points total improved and fell a hair short of 6,000 but Zelinka admitted that not having a field full of the world's best took a toll, along with weather delays.

"It was exhausting," she said. "I was pooped for a few days afterwards just because it took a lot of energy to get into the zone and to focus on what I needed to."

Zelinka turns 29 in early September and will have one more competition before Delhi to sharpen her skills and build up her stamina. It's in Talence, France, on Sept. 18-19.

Now, about those breaks.

The Commonwealth Games could be a great confidence boost for the Canadian as she reboots towards the world championships in South Korea in late August 2011, which are followed just over a month later by the Pan Am Games in Mexico.

Ghanaian, Briton will be top competition

England, winners of the heptathlon in three of the last four Commonwealth gatherings, are sending a trio not quite up to their recent standard. Ennis has decided not to compete in Delhi, while 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth champion Kelly Sotherton's body has broken down.

Zelinka thinks highly of Ennis as a person but says with tongue fairly well in cheek that the Briton will be "greatly missed" in India.

Of the three women England is sending to the Commonwealth Games, only Louise Hazel has reached a personal best beyond the standard Zelinka has already met in her two competitions since returning.

Australia, meanwhile, did not include a heptathlete in their team list in late August (their best recent heptathlete, Kylie Wheeler, retired last year).

Jamaica is now a track power but still fledgling in the women's field events. Peaches Roach set a personal best in the heptathlon this summer, but it was still 200 points shy of Zelinka's score at the Canadian championships.

In addition to Hazel and Simpson-Senya, Zelinka's top competition in Delhi will likely come from Rebecca Wardell of New Zealand, and the athletes representing the home country. India, gearing up for their big international meet, qualified three women at the Beijing Games, although 27th was their best showing.

It all puts Zelinka in line to be the first Canadian to earn a medal in the heptathlon at the Commonwealth Games since Catherine Louise Bond-Mills took bronze in 1994 in Victoria, B.C. No Canadian woman has won gold or silver in the event since its Commonwealth inception in 1982.

Zelinka would love to finish in the 6,200 range, but she knows that the medals won't be handed out based on reputation.

"I'm not going to be able to score under 6,000 and expect anything great, so I do have to perform well to be able to win a medal and win the gold, hopefully."

She could use a shiny new plaything for two, after all.