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Traumatic birth Olympians next big challenge

Golden times: Olympic sailing gold medallist Elise Rechichi with daughter Charlotte. Picture: Michael Wilson/The West Australian

A beautiful joy mirrors in the eyes of Elise Rechichi and her baby daughter Charlotte as they play on the Royal Perth Yacht Club foreshore that set her on a path to international fame.

But the 2008 Olympic gold medallist's first union with her newborn child was a world away from this week's touching scene.

Charlotte is now six months into a life that her parents feared may not blossom past birth. The baby was diagnosed 28 weeks into the pregnancy with a congenital heart condition. Spinal issues, where some bones had not formed properly, had been detected 10 weeks earlier.

"We had a very complicated pregnancy . . . it was quite difficult and traumatic," Rechichi said during a trip home to Perth from her Melbourne base.

"Very few people knew we were having a baby because it was so complicated and we didn't know how it would end and we didn't want to explain it.

"Having any pregnancy is obviously challenging but when you know the outcome is very uncertain, it is quite distressing and often takes the joy out of it.

"But now we think we're so lucky because we know it could have been so much worse."

Watching Charlotte's fresh, chubby baby face light up as her bubbly mother sings children's songs, completely belies the fact that she needs surgery to fill in "quite a large hole" in her heart and correct her spine.

They are operations she will not be strong enough to handle until she is aged about two.

Doctors have given Rechichi and partner Karl Reindler, a former V8 Supercar driver, a positive prognosis for their precious girl and they were keen to raise awareness about the one in 100 babies born with congenital heart disease.

"It's very difficult for people to talk about because it's one thing to have to deal with it without then the whole world knowing, too," she said.

"We willingly talk about it now because most people don't know how common it is. Four babies are born every day with congenital heart disease but you don't think about that until it's you.

"Sport teaches you that there is nothing you can't overcome and you can problem-solve pretty much anything to the extent that you're willing and determined.

"But this was a different scenario where it was the first time in your life that you kind of had no control and it then becomes how you deal with it afterwards.

Rechichi said she had tried to stay as healthy as possible during pregnancy to give Charlotte her best shot at life. She ran regularly until it became too uncomfortable and then switched to walking, yoga and Pilates.

Rechichi grew up in Nedlands and Peppermint Grove and was at one stage training to be a gymnast.

"But my parents took me out of that and I had all of this extra energy, so they sent me to the furthest place they could to burn it off and that was in the middle of the Swan River," she laughed, recalling the moment her journey into elite sailing began.

But in 2006, her life, let alone her Olympic dreams, was threatened by a mystery virus after she ingested contaminated waters from China's Fushan Bay.

She said complications still lingered from the illness, which left her in hospital for a scary four months and led to her shedding 20 per cent of her already fragile frame as she lay sleeping for up to 18 hours a day.

"I'd hardly ever got sick before that and have had a whole bunch of issues since then, so I think it's definitely played a role in affecting my immune system," she said.

Reindler, who is now a now a development manager for the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport's young driver academy, is also no stranger to adversity.

In 2011, he was involved in one of the most spectacular crashes at Perth's Barbagallo Raceway when his car turned into a fireball after being hit and he needed major skin grafts from WA burns specialist Fiona Wood.

A horrified Rechichi was watching on from the stands.

Now she jokes Charlotte looks so much like her father, some people referred to her as "Karlotte".

Rechichi, who turns 30 in January, retains a strong friendship with her women's 470 gold medal sailing partner Tessa Parkinson and is hopeful of a return to Australia's Olympic team in some form of mentoring role for Rio next year.