Melanie Roach

Generally speaking, motherhood can be a real career killer for a female athlete. But as Melanie Roach, 33-year-old weightlifter and mother of three, tells it, she never would have made it to Beijing if she hadn't had kids.

In 1998, the five-foot-one, 117-pound Roach abandoned a middling career as a gymnast for weightlifting and found instant success. That year she became the first American woman to set an unofficial world record by lifting twice her body weight. After her historic lift Roach was expected not only to qualify for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but touted as a medal favorite as well.

But a pair of sudden injuries dashed those dreams. She hyperextended her right elbow four months before the 1999 world championships and suffered a herniated disk in her back eight weeks before the Olympic trials in 2000. She attempted to compete anyway, but ended up watching her teammates from the stands. "It was the most devastating time in my life," she says.

Smarting from disappointment and injury, Roach started a family with her husband, Dan, in hopes of filling her competitive void, and she soon gave birth to her first child, Ethan. Her second son, Drew, who is autistic, came 15 months after that. When her third, daughter Camille, arrived less than three years after that, "People were like, 'What are you doing?!'" Roach said.

But the clustered pregnancies may have rejuvenated her body for a career relaunch. The injury and pain—compounded by three bone fragments imbedded in the nerve—spurred back spasms so searing that she couldn't pick her kids up out of their cribs. It left her mostly bedridden with depression for eight years.

However, when she was pregnant, the weight of the baby took so much of the pressure off of Roach's back that she was pain-free. During those reprieves, Roach felt fit enough to run again and lift (albeit much lighter weight). She also started seeing chiropractor—a move she had long resisted for fear of causing more long-term damage. But Roach's thrice-weekly treatments wound up expanding her training window and eventually allowed her to start competing again.

After a 12th-place finish in the 2006 world championships, she decided to have the pioneering microdiscectomy back procedure that uses a high-powered microscope. Five days after the operation, she could lift weights without bending her back. Seven months later, she won her seventh national championship and, later, took bronze at the Pan American Games and regained the top ranking among American lifters.

She followed that up with a dominant performance at U.S. Nationals in May, clinching a spot on the Olympic team with a lift of nearly 240 pounds. But the biggest thrill came afterward, when she walked into her news conference and found Dan and the kids waiting to congratulate her. "I would not have appreciated making the team in 2000 as much as I do right now," she says. "Having the family there has really made that moment that much sweeter."