Asked if any other athlete’s comeback inspired her, Missy Franklin didn’t need to think back very far.
She recalled July 14. The recent University of Georgia transfer student remembered doing homework on her laptop that Saturday afternoon and receiving a phone news alert. A headline stated Serena Williams missed in her comeback from pregnancy because she lost the Wimbledon final.
“I don’t get angry, like that’s not an emotion that I feel,” the still-effervescent Franklin said, “but I was so upset that they could have called her comeback falling short of anything.”
Williams returned to the WTA Tour six months after a pregnancy that was followed by pulmonary embolism complications and many surgeries that left her bedridden for six weeks.