Pregnant Schleper will sit out World Cup season

Life has taken an unexpected turn for U.S. Ski Team veteran alpiner Sarah Schleper, who revealed Monday that she is a little more than three months pregnant and will not return to the World Cup circuit this season.
    The 28-year-old Schleper, who missed all of last season to recuperate from a pair of surgeries on her back and knee in 2006, believes she can return to the race hill in 2008-09 — albeit with a new perspective on life and likely a nanny in tow.
    “It’s amazing how in one day, one instant, everything changes around so fast,” Schleper said Monday from her family’s summer home in Minnesota.
LIFE HAS TAKEN an unexpected turn for U.S. Ski Team veteran alpiner Sarah Schleper, who revealed Monday that she is a little more than three months pregnant and will not return to the World Cup circuit this season.
    The 28-year-old Schleper, who missed all of last season to recuperate from a pair of surgeries on her back and knee in 2006, believes she can return to the race hill in 2008-09 — albeit with a new perspective on life and likely a nanny in tow.
    “It’s amazing how in one day, one instant, everything changes around so fast,” Schleper said Monday from her family’s summer home in Minnesota. “[Not racing next season] was definitely the hardest thing for me because I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t feel like I’ve finished what I’ve started. But I also think things happen the way they happen, and you’ve kind of got to go with them.
    “I just thought about holding my own baby versus having a gold medal and it wasn’t really a hard decision after that. The ultimate in skiing would be a gold medal, but for me it was more of an ultimate to be holding my own baby. It was an easy decision.”
    Schleper said her due date is somewhere within the last week of January through the first week of February. She plans on delivering the baby in her hometown of Vail, Colorado, although she’s been living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for much of the past year resting and rehabbing her body in preparation for the upcoming season.
    Ironically enough, Schleper said she learned she was pregnant earlier this summer while coaching at Erich Sailer’s camp at Mount Hood. Schleper said she was pushing her body at Hood, skiing up to 11 runs at race intensity and feeling little if any pain in her back and left knee, which she had repaired to fix a torn ACL following the 2005-06 season.  
    Her goal of stepping back into the World Cup start house on track, Schleper said learning of her pregnancy initially “was kind of devastating.”
    “I was really bummed out,” she added. “I think I could have done it and I was excited to get back out there. I trained with the team in Mammoth [in May] and my slalom was right there already. The coaches were super-psyched. I think I just needed a little more time on my GS skis because that’s a little more about timing. I’m just going to have to watch a lot of video over the winter and stay on top of it again.”
    Having the full support of her fiancée Federico — the two are planning a wedding but not until 2009 at the earliest — father Buzz and the rest of her family, Schleper said, has been wonderful as she figures out how best to navigate what promises to be a tricky path over the next few years. She insists that she’ll race at most two more seasons, and her sponsors, including Rossignol and Lange, also have been supportive of her decision to focus on motherhood.
    If she resumes her World Cup career in 2008, Schleper said she would travel with her baby around Europe for the remainder of that season before returning to Mexico for the summer.
    “I have no idea what it’s going to be like after birth and how my body’s going to be, but I’ve been doing the recommended exercise and trying not to push it too much, which has been the hardest thing, probably,” she said. “I’ve been doing some running, a lot of swimming, I’ll probably do a little more surfing, too. I’ve water-skied. I’ve been trying to take it easy, but it’s hard. After the birth, I’m just going to try and get back into shape as quickly as possible.”