Italian Arianna Errigo won team gold at the Fencing World Championships – a feat doctors said would be impossible after she gave birth to twins by caesarean section five months earlier.
“It was almost mission impossible,” said Errigo, who also won individual silver on Wednesday in Milan.
“All the doctors I spoke to told me that it wouldn’t be possible. I didn’t have a natural birth but a C-section.
“Obviously that completely changes the recovery process.”
Italy coach Stefano Cerioni called the triple Olympic medallist’s achievement “crazy”.
“She worked a lot because she didn’t want to miss this event 20km from her home,” he added. “It’s Arianna, a champion, talent embodied.”
Errigo, 35, has won 10 individual world medals over the past 14 years and achieved identical results to this week’s in last year’s tournament in Egypt.
But she had not competed since then and had to go through qualifiers to make her home event.
“I feel like I’ve spent four and a half months in a washing machine,” said Errigo.
“I often wondered who made me do this. It was really difficult to recover from childbirth, the caesarean, get back to training, lose weight, go to the gym in the morning with three hours of sleep.”
Now aiming for a fourth Olympics in Paris next year, she dedicated victory to “my two jewels,” pointing to her earrings bearing the letters M and S, for her babies Mirea and Stefano, born on March 3.