Mother. Racer.
WORDS: REBECCA BLAND
IMAGES: HONOR ELLIOTT
Le Col - Wahoo’s road captain, former Belgian national elite road champion, junior TT champion, and also mother – Jesse Vandenbulcke is a many-faceted person, who manages these varied roles with calm composure and an innate leadership ability.
This weekend, Jesse will watch the Ronde van Vlaanderen from the sidelines, after sustaining an injury to her hand in a crash last month. It’s a tough break – she is a Belgian rider, after all, and there is no higher race than ‘the Ronde’ for riders from that country. She will not be sitting alone when she watches her teammates tackle the Koppenberg, however, she will do so with her partner and son there to support her.
Currently, there aren't that many mums in the professional peloton. There are certainly more than ever before, thanks to the higher-profile pregnancies of Lizzie Deignan and Elinor Barker demonstrating that teams can and do have the capacity to support maternity leave, but despite that it is still very uncommon. At the end of 2018, a maternity clause was added to Women’s WorldTeam contracts entitling riders to three months of fully paid leave.
As the sport makes progress, it’s important to affirm that, despite not yet being WorldTour, Le Col - Wahoo is 100% committed to supporting its athletes if and as they decide to begin families.
To tell Jesse’s story, we need to go back six years. In 2016, she had fallen out of love with cycling. Combined with constant back problems, she called time on her career as a cyclist and eventually became pregnant, giving birth in 2017 to Fabian, her son.
“After I became pregnant, when I did any kind of sports, I was getting sick so I didn’t ride my bike for one year, maybe one and a half. But when I became a bit fatter – not because I was eating much but just because I was pregnant – I saw a number on the scale that I'd never reached before. In the end, I was 20kg heavier than before I was pregnant, and then I thought, 'Maybe I need to do some sports again’.”
Despite quitting for reasons unrelated to her family life, people assumed she had taken the break specifically to have Fabian.
“A lot of people were asking me when I was at a race with my boyfriend, ‘Oh, are you going to start cycling again after you give birth?’ And I said ‘No, for sure, no.' But then we spoke about it with each other and I thought maybe I was not finished with cycling. I thought ‘When I give birth I will buy a bike, start training and I will see if I would like to go racing’."
RETIRING, RECALIBRATING, REKINDLING
During this time, before deciding to once again race her bike, Jesse worked as a DS on a women’s junior team, sharing her knowledge with the next generation.
“It allowed me to share my experience with the younger girls of 16, 17 years old. One of them was Shari Bossuyt and she’s now in the Canyon SRAM team, so that’s quite cool for me to race next to her after giving her a bit of my knowledge.”
As Jesse re-kindled her love for cycling, she signed for a UCI team and in 2019 became the Belgian national champion. It's a comeback story for sure, but it demonstrates how far the peloton has come in recent years in terms of accepting that professional riders can successfully return from maternity leave – or in Jesse’s case a retirement that turned into a form of unofficial maternity leave – and still do their job to an incredibly high standard.
She agrees that part of this success is down to her supportive partner, who previously raced but now focuses on full-time work and holding down the fort when Jesse is away training and racing. Nonetheless, being a mum and a professional cyclist is two full-time jobs, and previously stressful situations like training camps can provide much needed time away from home.
“The joke that I always have with Liesbet De Vocht, my old DS at Lotto, she'd always say to me, 'When you are away with the team, you are on vacation'. And it is a bit like that, because I only need to ride my bike and, okay, maybe we have some other stuff to do, but I don't need to cook, clean, or go to the shop, so it is kind of a vacation.”
Fabian is old enough now to attend races – in Belgium they start you very young – and can often be seen with his mum and dad at the Le Col - Wahoo team bus. Racing, nevertheless, provides a bit of space for Jesse, and she says she always goes home from time away even happier to see her family again.
“When we are on training camp, it's like 70% easier than when I am at home. Of course, the training is really hard and you're really suffering but afterwards, you can sleep and rest. So for me, the difference is really big. It's also nice to sometimes be away from home because it's a break mentally, but when you're back home, you're happier to see them."
Changing times
When she is at home, her training is planned around Fabian's schedule, which – as he is almost five years old now – involves school, something that Jesse frames as "helpful for planning your training”.
“I’m on a higher level right now than before,” she says. “For sure my training on the bike is a bit smarter, but I don’t think it’s a really big difference between being a mother or not for what kind of training you are doing.”
Inside the peloton, the mood has noticeably shifted in the five years since her pregnancy, with riders often using her son as a conversation starter in the quieter moments of a race.
“Sometimes when you have a bit of a dead moment then they ask, ‘Oh, how is Fabian?’ That’s sometimes quite funny that you need to talk about your son in the race. But I’m not that mum that talks about him all the time, because most of them don’t have kids so I’m not sure they are interested in it!”
“I’m still a cyclist – it’s my full-time job, on top of being a mum, and I think for Fabian, it’s pretty cool for him at school to say ‘Oh my mum’s work is cycling, she rides a bike’.”
Contrastingly, being a mother has brought about new concerns for Jesse, in particular, the threat of a crash or injury.
“When you are racing, sometimes you’re a bit more scared because you have a kid. When you’re thinking about ‘Oh shit, if I crash, if I break my leg or my arm, then I’m not able to help my kid at home!’ And I need to do all that stuff at home, so sometimes it’s not only a positive point that you’re thinking you’re a mum. For the first year that was a big problem for me, but now I’m a bit more professional in that way.”
While she may not be able to pitch in with the dishes as much as usual right now because of her injured hand, after five years of being back in the professional peloton, Jesse is sure that overall her career choice positively impacts her son.
“I'm still a cyclist – it's my full-time job, on top of being a mum, and I think for Fabian, it's pretty cool for him at school to say 'Oh my mum's work is cycling, she rides a bike’. So that’s also a bit funny.”
As with many things, cycling has a long way to go before motherhood and supported maternity breaks become the norm. Jesse, Lizzie and Dame Sarah Storey have been trailblazers in this regard, and are helping to pave the way for women to no longer have to put their family plans on hold to continue their careers.
Balancing parenting and cycling is undoubtedly difficult, and of course, the nature of the job means time away from family, which can be challenging. But, with the right support and flexibility from their employers, there's no reason why women shouldn't be given the choice to start a family while they are professional athletes and to continue their careers where they left off.