British Triathlon have become the first national governing body in triathlon to introduce a pregnancy deferral policy for its Age Group team.

Women who qualify for an Age Group Championship race may now defer their slot in the Great Britain team for up to two years. The policy also applies to women who lose their baby during pregnancy.

The new policy has been co-developed over the last six months with Age Group athletes, with British Triathlon saying it ensures women who become pregnant after securing a spot on the team can return to training when they are ready and not feel pressured to return too early to keep their place.

Shocking statistics

It is a welcome development for the sport and comes just a few months after SheRACES and Fund Her Tri UK published a report on the real-life experiences of women in triathlon, alongside solutions to improve it and increase female participation.

We covered that here and one of the key findings was 79% of triathletes who became pregnant while preparing for a triathlon lost out on at least one race entry due to pregnancy.

We also sat down with the two women behind that report – Sophie Power (elite ultra-runner and founder of SheRACES) and Bianca Fernandez (7 x Ironman finisher and founder of Fund Her Tri) to dive deeper into their findings and the challenges they face.

Important step

A pregnancy deferral policy is already in place for British Triathlon’s World Class Programme, which enabled European Triathlon Champion Vicky Holland to return to competing at the highest level of the sport after the birth of her daughter at the start of 2023.

She explained: “As someone who struggled to regain entry into races post-partum, I know first-hand how important it is to be able to push pause or defer a race entry while both pregnant and in the period after giving birth.

“Women should not be expected to give up on their goals and ambitions, nor forfeit more than necessary in order to grow their families. It should be possible to have a child and then return to the sport you love when the time is right without being penalised in any way – just as it should be in the workplace.”

But the Age Group policy is another significant step and Verity Miles, Age Group Manager for British Triathlon, added: “We want to thank the Age Group athletes that helped us develop and refine this policy. We hope it will enable more women who want to be in the Age Group Team and become mothers to not have to choose between the two. Age Group athletes can apply for a deferral by contacting us.”

British Triathlon is running a webinar for anyone involved in swim, bike, run and triathlon who is interesting in finding out more about the policy and pre and post-partum training. They say they will announce more information on this in the near future.

The new Age Group pregnancy deferral policy can be found here.