Team GB athlete Amber Hill talks giving birth just 3 months before the Olympics

In celebration of the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, GLAMOUR has launched Change The Record, a series dedicated to the women of Team GB, who are flipping the narrative on what it means to be an elite female athlete – from competing on their periods, balancing training with pregnancy and motherhood, navigating body image pressures, and yes, chasing world records.

Here, we chat with Olympic shooter Amber Hill – who returns to the Olympics just three months after giving birth to her son – about training as a first-time mum, shifting her perspective after disappointment at Tokyo 2020 and the importance of speaking up about mental health…

Skeet shooter Amber Hill nearly quit her sport in 2021 after a shock-positive COVID test ruled her out of the Tokyo Olympics. “The only reason I continued was to pay my bills,” she says. I needed the sponsorship and the money to be able to basically live and carry on. For a year after that, I was literally turning up to competitions for no other reason. I was in such a bad place.”

But today, as she prepares to compete again at Paris 2024, she has a new mindset – after welcoming her baby son, Tommy, just three months ago.

“Now, what I think about is the story I want to tell him when he’s older. I want him to know that it was really, really difficult, but his mum took an opportunity to put herself first – I was a mum and a sports person. I went out there, and I did my very best for him. And just showing him that, you know what? Your life doesn’t have to stop. You can make both things work. But for me, being his mum will always be the priority over everything.

“Since having Tommy, I’ve just realised that there’s so much more to life than our sport—even though it’s such a big part of me and requires a huge amount of sacrifice. But when I come home from a bad day’s training and see my baby smiling and chuckling, it puts it all into perspective.”

Amber shares that she let “fate take hold” when she began trying for a baby with her husband James, knowing the Olympics were getting closer and closer. “It was something we really wanted – when we were trying, I was counting down the months of how close we could really get until I had to choose between becoming a mum or putting that on hold and going to the Olympics,” she says.

But in the end, Tommy arrived in May 2024. “I always felt that if I could give myself a good few months, I believed I could get back into training,” she says. “I always believed I can give it a really, really good shot – and I can do everything. And that’s exactly what I did.”