Olympic medallist Annalise Murphy on going back to training after childbirth

Much has happened in Annalise Murphy’s life since she won an Olympic medal in Rio in 2016. She’s got married, had a baby, and is now literally back on her bike

Annalise Murphy has returned to sailing and she trains for two hours a day in Dublin Bay.

Olympic medallists are just built different, right? We mere mortals accept they have entirely different physical gifts from us — as well as unique mentalities to maximise them — yet our minds still get blown.

Ten years after she became only the fourth Irish woman to win an Olympic medal, Annalise Murphy, 36, still radiates health and fitness and, if you follow her socials, you’ll have been slack-jawed at everything she’s done since.

While Murphy was an Olympic sailor, cycling provided the bulk of her endurance training on dry land and it was rumoured that her stats on cycling and biking app, Strava, were off the charts.

The Rathfarnham woman has crammed an awful lot into the decade since winning silver in the ‘laser radial’ discipline at the 2016 Olympics: crewing on the Volvo Ocean Race, trying out a double-handed Olympic discipline (the 49’er) before returning to her single-handed speciality for the Tokyo 2021 campaign, and retiring afterwards to complete an MBA and return to civvy street, working for SportsKey, a software company.

After putting her ‘laser’ in dry dock post-Tokyo she immediately flourished as a competitive cyclist, regularly making the podium at national level races, on both road and track.

Cian Bailey, a fellow cyclist, got down on his knees mid-spin to propose. They married in August 2025. She wasn’t aware, when she competed in her last bike race before pregnancy, that she was already seven weeks along.

Juliette was born eight months ago. Just a week after giving birth, Murphy was back cycling on a turbo trainer beside her in the living room.

Annalise Murphy with her daughter Juliette

“When she’d be having a nap I’d just jump on the turbo. An hour’s cycle would sometimes take two or three hours because I’d do 20 minutes before she’d wake for a feed and I’d get her back to sleep and then get on for another 20 minutes.

“Pushing myself again felt so good that I did my first 60km road race back when she was 11 weeks old. I’d no expectations at all and I ended up winning it,” she laughs.

A baby trailer that can be pushed or towed was immediately purchased and has since been supplemented with a cargo-bike.

Anyone who’s ever driven through the Wicklow Mountains is familiar with the legendary Sally Gap.

The toughest gradient on what is a continuous 20km climb leaves most cyclists shattered yet Annalise has already done it on the cargo-bike, carrying Juliette in front of her and only switching into electric mode at the very steepest point.

Watching her incorporate her baby so seamlessly into her active and super-competitive life it’s easy to succumb to the assumption that Olympians are just a different breed who can conquer any physical challenge.

Yet pregnancy challenged Murphy far more than any Olympic training programme because she suffered from severe hyperemesis gravidarum (HG).

Annalise Murphy gearing up to cycle the Ring of Kerry Charity Cycle 

“I was so nauseous. It very quickly got to the point where I couldn’t function,” she reveals, explaining that not even prescription medicines like cyclizine helped for most of it.

“I was having to go into hospital to get drips and couldn’t even face simple tasks like having a shower. The dry retching was the worst, you’d be at it all day long. It improved a bit after 20 weeks but I was a bit miserable again for the last five or six weeks.

“I was trying to find the plainest foods I could eat and keep it down. You’re desperately trying to feed yourself and your baby the best possible nutrients but honestly, there were days when all I could eat was a bag of Haribo,” she admits.

Fortunately, the hyperemesis disappeared once she gave birth at 39-and-a-half weeks.

“Literally, the minute she came out I felt incredible. It was instantaneous!

“A lot of people joked that I had such a rough pregnancy I was going to have a really good baby but when things were so bad I was thinking maybe I’m going to have a demon child,” she laughs.

“But Juliette is an exceptionally good baby. She sleeps well, loves everyone, is pretty chill, and and is happy out in the stroller or the cargo-bike.”

Dehydration and the loss of nutrients, for both mums and their babies, are two serious complications with HG.

Murphy is a close friend of Jennifer O’Connell, one of the three co-founders of the female supplement company Sisterly, whose inaugural ‘Elevator’ product she had previously taken daily.

Once she discovered it wasn’t formulated for pregnancy, she paused it and her difficult pregnancy prompted them to create a prenatal alternative called ‘The Booster’ which is now on the market.

The Booster contains ingredients like active folate and choline, both key elements for maternal tissue growth, as well as magnesium to counter tiredness and methylated B vitamins.

Sisterly says its 23 vitamins contain some that were previously under-represented or missing from traditional prenatal supplements.

It is a powder-based soluble that you drink, meaning it can more easily be taken and absorbed for women struggling to keep tablets down.

“I definitely would have been sceptical about supplements because I know so much about nutrition,” Murphy says.

“But the training I do pushes my body more than it always likes to be pushed and, since taking The Elevator I’ve definitely been less sick or picking up bugs.

“When you’re pregnant there are additional worries. You’re warned to avoid vitamin A and get more folic acid so having a specialist supplement, designed by a female-led company that I trust, was important to me while pregnant and also now that I’m breastfeeding.”

Murphy was happy to be among the first to trial The Booster and is still using it to continue its benefits while breast-feeding, counting herself lucky that the latter has been “a relatively easy journey for me”.

“By pure luck my lactation consultant happened to be the midwife working in Holles Street the day Juliette was born. My sister Claudine had her baby Lara four months before me so we’re on the same journey which also helps.

“Breastfeeding can be hard work at times and you have to get comfortable getting your boobs out in public,” she notes.

“Initially I was trying to find (quiet) places to go and feed but I quickly realised, with my lifestyle, that was going to be way too challenging. The world hasn’t stopped or had a heart attack and if you don’t make a big deal about it, people don’t even notice.”

She and Cian are still living with her parents. They got the keys to their first house just before Juliette was born, a renovation job which, in theory, suits given that Cian is a builder but, like anyone in the trade, paying work has to be his priority right now.

“When I asked my parents, two-and-a-half years ago, if we could move in while we were saving for a deposit, they probably didn’t realise we were going to get married, have a baby, and still be here,” she quips.

Unforseen was that she would also get back into competitive sailing this year after a five-year hiatus.

Re-launching her boat to help out with some coaching ahead of Dublin hosting the upcoming ILCA World Championships — ILCA is a new title for her Olympic class — she got hooked again.

“The weather was gorgeous, there was a porpoise jumping around and it was like the world was telling me I needed to go back sailing,” she explains.

After winning Nationals, she successfully applied for a spot at Worlds and will be mixing it again with the globe’s top 120 from September 5 to 12.

“I don’t have any grand long-term plan. A lot of the best female sailors in the world were coming to train and race in Dublin Bay. I know most of them so I thought it would be pretty cool to race against them again on home waters, with no pressure.”

Annalise Murphy sailing in Dublin Bay, Dublin. Picture: INPHO/Bryan Keane

How on earth does she fit the training in?

“I have a very set window of between three to four hours in the morning when I can leave Juliette with my parents or my aunt. I jump on my bike, cycle as fast as I can down to Dún Laoghaire and can be with my boat in 30 minutes. Then I train for two hours and jump back on the bike. When you have a baby there’s no time for faffing around.”

• The Booster is an expertly formulated prenatal blend featuring 23 essential nutrients at optimal, meaningful doses to support your body through pregnancy and breastfeeding. From €69 a month at sisterlylab.com.