By Claire Toureille For Mailonline

Published: 11:52 EDT, 23 February 2022 | Updated: 07:43 EDT, 1 March 2022

Some of Britain's top Olympians have revealed they have seen 'urine flying through the air' at competitions as female athletes are suffering an 'incontinence crisis'. 

Team GB trampolinist Laura Gallagher Cox, 32, and her teammate Izzy Songhurst, 23, who represented the UK at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, have explained how they now experience stress incontinence while performing.   

For many female athletes in high impact sports like gymnastics or rugby, the issue occurs when a constant downward pressure is placed on the pelvic floor to the extent where it becomes too tight.  

Laura and Izzy told The Telegraph that they have to wear pads while competing or go to the bathroom five times a session. They said that the anxiety they get from the fear of leakage can throw them off their game.  

Laura, who won the 2017 British National Championship in trampolining,  explained: 'I’ve been at competitions where I’ve seen girls pee as they take off – when they do a double back somersault you’ll genuinely see urine flying through the air.' 

Team GB trampolinist Laura Gallagher Cox, 32, pictured at the Tokyo Olympics of 2020, has revealed she experiences stress incontinence while performing

Laura, left, Izzy, centre, have both confessed they suffer from anxiety due to their incontinence. Izzy said the issue can distract her and throw her off when she's competing 

Laura, who won the 2017 British National Championship in trampolining, recalled an incident aged 15 where she wet herself as she landed from a jump during a competition 

She recounted how the incident threw her off and the added shame of people around knowing what had happened to her. 

Laura explained that it was common for gymnasts and trampolinists to have problems with their bladders. 

She pointed out that they are often putting 'up to 16 times their body weight' through the trampoline.  

French gymnasts Emilie Le Pennec, who triumphed in Athens at the 2004 Olympics, pictured, made headlines in 2005 when she wet herself at the World Championships and was mercilessly mocked online 

Nearly two decades on from her own leaking incident, she is still crippled by the embarrassing memory.

According to the NHS, one in five women suffers from incontinence in the UK.

There are several forms of incontinence, with stress incontinence being the most common. 

- Stress incontinence occurs when urine leaks out when your bladder is under pressure.

- Urge incontinence is defined as a sudden urge to pee

- Overflow incontinence, also known as chronic urinary retention occurs when you're unable to fully empty your bladder, which causes frequent leaking

- Total incontinence is the most severe form of the condition and occur when bladder cannot be store in the bladder at all, causing constant leaking.

There are several things that can cause incontinence, which include: 

- A family history of incontinence

- Increasing age – although incontinence is not an inevitable part of ageing

She confessed she now goes to the bathroom five times per session and does not drink during training, despite advice from her nutritionist, in order to decrease the risk of a leak. 

However, she said she counts herself lucky that the issue did not develop into a long-term issue in her adult years. 

Izzy Songhurst, who also represented Team GB at the Trampoline competition in Tokyo last summer, developed incontinence issues aged 13 and now wears several pads under her leotard when she competes. 

Izzy, who is a former European and world junior trampolining champion, said she can go through four pads in one training session. 

'If you’re having a bad day, you do worry about whether your pad is showing through the back of your leotard or if it’s coming out the side.' she said. 

She added the distracting issue causes her anxiety and can throw her performance when she is competing. 

Incontinence is often viewed as a condition that impacts women after childbirth, or something that comes on with age, however, active women are much more at risk of developing it. 

In athletes, the issue is not that the pelvic floor is too weak, but rather, that it is too tight and that training has damaged the way the pelvic floor's muscles contract. 

Female athletes are 177 per cent more at risk of developing pelvic floor issues and incontinence than sedentary women, and this is common to a wide range of sporting activities, including athletics, basketball and volleyball, cross country skiing and running.  

FEMAIL has contacted British Gymnastics to inquire whether a plan was in place to help tackle incontinence issues encountered by female athletes.

In the world of Rugby, the head physiotherapist of the Welsh female team Jo Perkins explained she had discovered several of the players suffered from incontinence through a health questionnaire they filled during the firs covid-19 lockdown in 2020. 

She said the players told her they suffered from abdominal pain, wet themselves or that using tampons was painful, which she identified as signs of pelvic floor dysfunction. 

When she began to investigate the cause of the team's stress incontinence, she found that the players were leaking more when they jumped than when they tackled. 

Laura, who won the 2017 British National Championship in trampolining, said she has been at competitions where 'girls pee as they take off'

The team began a partnership with the fem tech brand Elvie, which works with a smart kegel trainer that's inserted in the vagina in order to strength the pelvic floor and helps monitor their progress.  

FEMAIL contacted England Rugby, who said they have produced resources to tackle the issue. 

This includes multidisciplinary strategies that focus on the players' menstrual cycle and urinary incontinence. 

They said the work on this area is 'ongoing.' 

Meanwhile Baz Moffat, a women’s health coach at The Well HQ, which specialises in pelvic floor education, said that the message that pelvic floor issues can be fixed with kegel exercises alone does not apply to athletes. 

The head physiotherapist for the Welsh female rugby team is relying on a fem tech brand to train her players' pelvic floors (pictured at the end of the Six Nations women rugby union tournament match between France and Wales in Montpellier in 2019) 

Baz, who is a former rower herself, said that for sportspeople, the issue is not so much that they have a weak pelvic floor, but that they do not know how to relax it for down training.

She said having a pelvic floor that's too tight can also cause issues because this is a dynamic muscle that should move with each breath we take. 

Women can develop urinary tract infections if their pelvic floor is too tight, she explained.    

A 2021 study published in the International Urogynecology Journal on 319 gymnasts and cheerleaders found that two third of them suffered from incontinence. 

And Moffat added that parents of gymnasts had told her their daughters had started to wet the bed because their core were overtight and overworked due to their intense training. 

Ecuador's Maria Alexandra Escobar Guerrero was mocked when she suffered a leak while attempting a lift at the Rio Olympics in 2016, pictured 

The issue is not new, with studies on athletic incontinence populating several Google Search pages, and in 1999, the LA Times was already reporting that little help existed to tackle the issue. 

Across all sports and in wider society, incontinence is still regarded as a cause for embarrassment rather than a medical issue.

In 2005, the world cringed as France's Olympics gymnastics champion Emilie Le Pennec suffered a leak at the World Championships. 

Meanwhile at the London Olympics of 2012, Ecuadorian weightlifter Maria Alexandra Escobar Guerrero was also mocked for leaking while attempting a lift. 

A urinary tract infection, more commonly known as a UTI, is an infection in any part of the urinary system.

UTIs can have different names depending on which part of the urinary tract is infected.

Cystitis affects the bladder, pyelonephritis affects the kidneys and urethritis affects the ureter and urethra.

Women are much more likely to get a UTI with their risk being as high as 1 in 2 in their lifetime compared to 1 in 10 among men. 

The most common cause of UTIs is a transfer of bacteria from the anus to the urethra. Because women have shorter urethras and less distance between the two body parts, it is easier for bacteria to be introduced. 

Antibiotics are the most common treatment followed by drinking a lot of water to flush bacteria from the body.  

UTIs do not typically lead to death but, when left untreated, they can cause sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which chemicals that the immune system releases into the bloodstream to fight an infection cause inflammation throughout the entire body instead. 

The term for sepsis caused by a UTI is urosepsis. 

A 2019 study found that the risk of a bloodstream infection was more than seven times greater in patients who did not receive antibiotics immediately after seeing a physician for a UTI.

The estimated mortality rate from urosepsis is between 30% and 40%.

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