Olympic champ Fox excited to see ‘more possibilities’ for female athletes to balance family with career

Olympic gold medallist Jess Fox says she welcomes sporting bodies making changes that help female athletes juggle their careers with being a parent.

Fox is familiar with the challenges faced by women in sport when they have to balance having children with competing at the elite level.

Her mother, Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, won bronze for France in canoe slalom at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, two years after giving birth to her daughter.

Fox said athletes such as her mother had proven “what is possible” for future generations.

She said it was “amazing to see the progress” made by sporting bodies to support athletes wishing to start a family without having to retire.

“I probably wasn’t thinking of that as an 18-year-old at all, but I saw women who had done it,” Fox told ABC Sport.

“I think the next generation won’t ever have to question these things, so it’s good to see different sports evolving in terms of policy and the way they support female athletes if they do want to have children and come back to sport.

“I think it’s super important.”

Fox said competition and training was her priority at the moment, with the Paris Olympics to be staged next year.

Paris will be the culmination of a truncated Olympic cycle, the result of the 2020 Tokyo Games being delayed by 12 months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fox — who won gold in the slalom C-1 event in Tokyo — said she was not struggling with inspiration ahead of the Paris Olympics.

“I think it still remains just the potential for improvement … and keep learning and to see that I’m still hungry and motivated and excited to be training and racing and enjoying it, most importantly,” she said.

“So, Paris is obviously just around the corner and my goal is to qualify and get there.”

Fox said she did not have any plans to retire after Paris but the four-time Olympic medallist would take a “year-on-year” approach before deciding on when to end her career.