Hellebaut to make return

Belgium's Olympic high jump champion Tia Hellebaut announced this week that she was coming out of retirement following the comebacks of her tennis playing compatriots Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin.

Hellebaut, 32, retired from competition in December 2008 and gave birth to a daughter last June.

She said in a blog on her website (www.tiahellebaut.be) on Tuesday that she had decided to return during a holiday in Spain at the end of September, the month when Clijsters won the US Open and Henin announced her comeback.

"I was wrestling with a question which I had not dared to ask out loud: 'what you can do in tennis, can you also do in athletics'?" she wrote.

"After my Olympic gold I had somewhat lost the sense of a challenge, but how about this: to jump two metres as a mother."

Hellebaut said she had since brought her weight down to an appropriate level to jump and would assess in April which competitions she would enter.