and the teams seasons have been disappointing. I have been down and sad about being out of action for five month

RIO DE JANEIRO -- If you strapped weights to Usain Bolts chest, replaced his six-pack stomach with abs stretched out of shape, de-tuned his muscular frame and explosive power by jellifying his joints, and forced him to take the best part of nine months off, how amazed would we all be if the worlds fastest man fully recovered from that fitness-shredding assault to once again vie for medals at the Olympic Games?Short answer: stunned. Likely adoring.Yet, across the Rio Games, amazing women are doing exactly this without the celebrate-this-from-rooftops full fanfare they deserve.Were talking, of course, about Olympic moms.By competing post-pregnancy, the likes of self-declared Momma on a Mission Dana Vollmer, a swimmer, are showing that having children and a continuing career in elite sport need not be mutually exclusive. That freedom to not have to choose either one or the other is important in encouraging women to compete for longer and later into their lives.On the most fundamental level, if nationalism and the race for medals are stripped away, the Olympics showcase what an astounding piece of machinery the human body is: malleable, adaptable, capable of absorbing and recovering from great punishment.Olympians who have put their bodies through motherhood and then willed and beaten them back into world-conquering shape are the purest embodiment of this.They are also something of a scientific mystery.Kari Bo, a Norwegian School of Sport Sciences researcher working on IOC-backed studies in this field, notes big holes in the scientific communitys understanding of how pregnancy affects elite athletes bodies. One common yet not fully understood impact is on joints.In pregnancy, the body produces a hormone, relaxin, that helps loosen up ligaments and the pelvic area for birth.Once back in the Olympic business of aiming faster, higher and stronger, looser joints arent necessarily a plus.British 10,000-meter runner Jo Pavey, competing at her fifth Olympics, blames relaxin for collapsing the arch of her left foot during pregnancy. She had to wear a bigger shoe on her left foot than on her right and stress-fractured her big toe, with a diagonal crack through a bone.Vollmer, who has an individual bronze and relay silver so far in Rio, says looser ligaments were a big thing for me in her post-pregnancy comeback. Having battled injuries in the past, she worried about over-extending her newly more flexible joints.I played it really cautious, she says. Just trying to make sure that everything was really stable before I really cranked on my strokes.And what of her post-pregnancy abs, so vital in her stroke, the butterfly?There were none, she says matter of factly.After seven weeks of enforced bed rest and having gained 50 pounds (22 kilograms), the triple gold medalist at the 2012 London Games was probably 10 percent of the athlete she used to be when she started working out again following her son Arlens birth in March 2015, says her coach, Teri McKeever.Gains and shifts in weight from pregnancy and breastfeeding also disrupt balance and change your relationship with the water, McKeever says.She still had a nice stroke but you go 100 meters and you have to stop, the coach says. Its amazing how quickly you lose it.Defending Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill also became a mother between London and Rio. To stop her from comparing herself to the athlete she was before son Reggies birth in July 2014, her coach, Toni Minichiello, wiped the slate clean, using what he calls post-pregnancy personal bests to measure Ennis-Hills progress since.Physically she wasnt the same person, Minichiello says on a blog chronicling their Rio journey. It was really tough mentally. Her body was changing month to month.Weakened ankles were a post-pregnancy problem for U.S. high jumper Chaunte Lowe, competing at her fourth games, because I had been waddling for so many months.It felt like it was impossible, she says of resuming jumping. You have that question of whether you have lost it forever.Second and third pregnancies broadened out what had been slim, boyish hips, giving Lowe less ideal new curves to squeeze over the high bar.By the third time, I felt like I had it down, she says. But then I was sleep deprived.So why start a column about amazing women with an amazing man, Bolt?Because if men were capable of all this, you can be sure more fuss would be made.Theres a school of thought which holds that it demeans women to make a big deal of pregnancy. After all, the argument goes, women have babies all the time.But few of them, too few, come back to compete at the Olympics. Just 10 of the 298 U.S. women are also moms.I was told that you can never get your body back, Vollmer says. I wanted to show that you can. I think it will keep women in sports much longer, that you can have family and you can make it work.They deserve our applause.---John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org or follow him at http://twitter.com/johnleicesterLonnie Johnson Texans Jersey . 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I dont know if I can quantify how far off or things like that that they might be but I would say we continue to have dialogue.Antonio Valencia believes Manchester Uniteds struggles this season are down to the sheer volume of injuries Louis van Gaal has had to cope with.The Ecuador international has endured another frustrating season with injuries, having just made his comeback from a foot injury that has kept him out of action since the end of October.In his absence, United have struggled and sit sixth in the table, with pressure mounting on Louis van Gaal to at least steer the club back into the top four. Valencia is not the only member of the United playing staff to have suffered injury setbacks this campaign, with Bastian Schweinsteiger the latest to be ruled out.And with so many key players frequenting the treatment room, Valencia believes anyone would have struggled with so few fit players.It has affected the way the manager has had to work, Valencia told Sky Sports News HQ. Your hands are tied. If you have a squad of 20 players, and ten are injured, then you are having to work with half a squad. Manchester United manager, Louis van Gaal, has set his sights on a top three Premier League finish It is not just short term injuries either. You look at Luke Shaw, myself, Wayne Rooney, we have been out for a long period.The bad form that we have had in that time has to be down to the amount of injuries that we have had.That is bound to affect performances, but now we are getting people back, we need to focus and really fight for the place in the Champions League. Marcus Rashford opens the scoring for Manchester United at the Etihad It is also down to the Premier League, it is tough league.ddddddddddddOne week you can play very well, and then the next week you are up against a team you are expected to beat, one that is fighting relegation, and they turn it on.Valencia also admitted that this frustration does not just stop with his lack of playing time, but seeing United struggle has also been hard to take.Both mine and the teams seasons have been disappointing. I have been down and sad about being out of action for five months, and a lot has happened in that time. Jamie Redknapp gives his thoughts ahead of Super Sunday as Leicester face Southampton before Everton travel to Old Trafford to face Manchester United Under Sir Alex Ferguson we were used to winning trophies year after year, so it does hurt to see others doing it now, but we have to accept that this profession that we work in is like that, there are ups and downs.Every new season is like a new dream, and we will be fighting to do much better for the fans next season.We have got to be looking to win every game to make sure we are in the Champions League next season, and I believe we have the players in the squad, and an excellent manager to be able to make that happen.By purchasing a Sky Sports Day Pass for £6.99 or Sky Sports Week Pass for £10.99, you can enjoy access to all seven Sky Sports channels and watch on a TV with a NOW TV Box or on a range of devices. ' ' '