PARIS: A grimace on Jessica Stenson's face quickly turned to a look of bliss as she crossed the finish line of the women's Olympic marathon.
Moments later, as she and Australian teammate Genevieve Gregson spoke to reporters, Stenson peered through a scrum of journalists and spotted her two kids: her daughter Ellie, who turns one next month, and her five-year-old son Billy.
And like the lights of the Eiffel Tower at night, the marathon mum's face lit up.
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"I'll probably start crying when I see them, so I won't talk too much, but it's so good to have them here," Stenson said.
The 36-year-old was beaming with joy as she waved to her kids at the Esplanade des Invalides, where her third Olympic marathon wound up.
Stenson finished 13th in a time of 2:26:45 as Gregson, who's a 35-year-old mum to two-year-old son Archer, trailed home 24th in 2:29:56.
At the halfway point of the course, Stenson spent a short while in the lead.
"I wanted to just tap in. I didn't want to look back too much, but I was keen to just take a mental break," the South Australian recalled.
"I was quite nervous about the final 10 [kilometres] because I knew there was always something to focus on for the first 32 [kilometres], and I didn't want to get mentally overwhelmed in the final 10.
"So at that point I started going through every marathon I've ever done in my head and thinking about how I felt at this point, and thinking about my family who I've just seen over there."
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Stenson has now completed two marathons since she and her husband Dylan welcomed their daughter into the world.
Only six months after giving birth, she ran a personal best of 2:24:01 at South Korea's Daegu Marathon in April. That run qualified her for Paris selection, which followed in May.
Gregson's Paris campaign played out in far different scenes to her Tokyo experience three years, where the Queenslander tripped in a steeplechase water pit and suffered an Achilles rupture.
She had planned for many years on eventually moving up to the marathon, but her Tokyo devastation brought about the shift earlier than expected.
In June 2022, almost a year after being rolled off the Tokyo track in a wheelchair, Gregson and her husband Ryan, a two-time Olympian, welcomed their son Archer into the world.
"It does [feel surreal]. I feel like all the surreal, 'pinch me' moments I tried to get out of the system because I wanted to be on the start line feeling less like an amateur and more like a seasoned pro in the marathon," Gregson said.
"It is only my third marathon and maybe that showed a little bit.
"But I'm very proud of everything I've done."
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