When Malene Degn imagined becoming a mother, she thought she knew what would change. Her body would slow down for a while. Training would need adjusting. A new person would enter her life, and somehow she would make room for him alongside the athlete she had spent years becoming. What she didn't expect was how completely that new person would rearrange the room.

Leo Storm arrived on 15 December, earlier than expected. Eight months later, he is crawling, smiling and impatient to discover whatever is in front of him. The love was not the surprise. What caught Malene off guard was the weight of being needed - and the force of an instinct she had never felt before.

Before

We first spoke to Malene while she was pregnant. She was already living through one transition. After ten seasons on the World Cup circuit, she had stepped away from professional team racing and moved to Switzerland. Leaving the World Cup had been her decision. Pregnancy was different: it placed limits on a body she had always trusted to do what she asked of it.

She had spent most of her life training towards a clear objective. Elite sport required attention to food, sleep, recovery, numbers and performance. Then pregnancy asked her to stop measuring herself in familiar ways.

“I come from a very athletic body. Being strong and fit, going for a long ride in the mountains was never an issue. Suddenly I couldn't train as much. I would go for a ride and be so tired that I had to sleep all afternoon.“

She was learning to tolerate softness: less muscle, less speed and less control. For months, she stopped caring how fast she was riding. She also spoke about the 'inner animal' she knew from racing - the part of herself she could call on when effort turned into pain. She hoped visualisation, breathing and the ability to endure a difficult moment might help her through birth.

In sport, she said, you can stop. In birth, you have to finish.

Zero control

When the moment came, the athlete's instinct to direct the body met something far more elemental.

“I have raced and felt that I pushed my body far, but this was a completely different experience. Nothing comes close to it. At one point your body wants this baby to come out, and there's simply nothing you can do. The only thing I could control was my breath. Everything else - my body knew what to do.“

The birth was fast. It was also the opposite of racing, where even under extreme pressure she was used to making decisions and managing the moment.

“Here there was zero control. You just have to let go and follow your instinct. It was the wildest experience I've ever had.”

The inner animal appeared, but not as she had imagined it. There was no controlled transfer of mental skills from the racecourse to the birth room. There were deep, involuntary sounds, a gas mask she held onto less for pain relief than for the rhythm it gave her breathing, and a body taking over from the mind. For an athlete accustomed to using discipline to overcome discomfort, surrender demanded a different kind of strength.

Progress

Before motherhood, progress was one of Malene's most reliable sources of motivation. Winning was rare and belonged to one person; improvement could be found in smaller, private measures. That understanding has survived, but the measures have changed.

Malene felt physically like herself again relatively quickly, but her body wasn't ready to perform as it had before. On her first mountain bike ride, she felt weakness in places she had never noticed on a bike. Rebuilding her abdominal wall and pelvic floor took months of breathing exercises and patient, incremental work. A first attempt at running told her plainly that it was too soon. She stepped back, trained the foundations and tried again later.

Progress can now be a stronger pelvic floor, a ride that doesn't deplete her or the ability to accept that she can't yet see far ahead. She would like to return to gravel and mountain bike events and to feel strong again. She also knows that searching endlessly for her former self will not take her where she wants to go.

“I want to feel a bit more like my old self, but I realise I should not search for her all the time. I have changed. I need to get to know this version of myself and create a life that fits who I am now.”

The larger barrier to returning was not physical. Malene believes she could have regained fitness more quickly if that had been what she wanted most. It wasn't.

“Physically, I could have been back on the bike and riding fast. Mentally, I just didn't want to.”

The athlete has not vanished. She is present in the attention Malene brings to recovery, in her curiosity about what her body may do next and in the quiet certainty left by birth: I did that, so I can do hard things.

The instinct she didn't know she had

Before Leo, Malene had never thought of herself as especially maternal. She was not the person who saw a baby and instinctively wanted to hold it. Motherhood revealed something she hadn't been able to anticipate.

“I really felt this motherly instinct in me that I didn't know I had. I was surprised by how protective I became and how much I simply wanted to be there for him.”

Malene had expected to ride and race more during Leo's first year. She hadn't accounted for the practical and emotional realities of breastfeeding, or for how much she would value it. When she increased her training, her milk supply dropped and Leo became unsettled. The conflict she might once have imagined agonising over took about a day to resolve.

“Seeing him upset made me decide that it didn't matter. It wasn't a hard decision at all. Since then, I've tried to balance it more.”

Feeding Leo demanded energy from her body, but it also gave her a form of stillness she hadn't known before.

“We have this moment together, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Knowing that my body is producing food for him is amazing. I feel lucky that I can do it.”

The independence she assumed she would protect didn't disappear through obligation alone. Part of her simply did not want to leave. She had imagined that her partner Nino might sometimes sleep beside Leo while she rested elsewhere before a long ride. Instead, she wanted to be the one next to him. She wasn't prevented from returning in the way she had planned. Her own instinct led her somewhere else.

The space in between

Eight months in, Malene occupies what she calls an in-between state. She misses training, racing and feeling fit. At times, motherhood makes her feel restrained. At the same time, she isn't ready to loosen her hold on Leo.

“I want some of my independence back, but I'm also not ready to let go of him. That feeling of wanting more independence is slowly coming to me.”

She has ridden and trained, though far less than expected. Two planned races were postponed or cancelled. Her reaction was mixed: disappointment, but also a sense that perhaps the timing was not right. For now, Leo has what she calls pole position.

Malene doesn't frame this year as time taken from her. She is learning to trust the pull to stay close and sees that time as something she is giving. At the same time, she is careful not to turn her own choice into a prescription. Watching other athlete mothers return to competition within six months has shown her how different motherhood can look.

“There are so many good ways to be a mother. You have to find your own way.”

More than a mother

Finding her own way will eventually mean taking up more space again. Malene wants Leo to know the person beyond his mother: the athlete, the worker and the woman with ambitions of her own.

Her own mother showed her that those identities didn't have to compete. She worked full-time at a university while running marathons and for a time shorter triathlons. The family traveled to support her along the way, and Malene never saw those ambitions as an absence, she admired them.

“I thought she was the best in the world. It was cool that we would go to Amsterdam for a marathon. I keep that in mind. As Leo grows up, he needs to experience who I am - that I am more than just his mother.”

That thought shapes how she imagines returning. A race or project will now have to be worth the time away: something she cares about, with people she wants to work with. The cycling world remains part of her identity, even while motherhood occupies more of it. Continued support from her partners has preserved that connection, although it can also create pressure to be visible before she feels ready.

The tension works in both directions. It can make her wonder whether she is doing enough. It can also remind her that she is still allowed to want something for herself.

“I want to do other things than being a mom, even though being a mom is really important to me. That part is slowly taking more space again.”

One day, Leo will see in Malene what she once saw in her own mother. That a woman’s ambitions can show her child how much a life can hold. For Malene, being there for Leo doesn't require leaving the athlete behind. Making room for cycling is part of allowing him to know her fully – as the mother who stayed close and the athlete who was there all along. There is no contradiction between the two. How she makes room for both will not be dictated by expectation, but guided by the instinct she has learned to trust. Together, they allow her to give Leo what her own mother gave her: the example of a life in which love and ambition can exist side by side.

By GripGrab
© GripGrab 2026