“When we learned the news about Isabelle’s pregnancy, I definitely had my doubts about the Olympics,” he said. “We asked ourselves and the doctors if it was really possible. It took some time to think, but after we made the decision to go for it, we didn’t let ourselves doubt. We worked and always tried to make it happen. I think that’s how we succeeded.”

Though Delobel continued to train and skate deep into her pregnancy, even suffering the occasional fall in practice, she left the ice in late July, giving birth on Oct. 1 to a son, Loïs, and then returning to practice in late October at their longtime training base in Lyon, France. She began three-a-day sessions and intense physical training in November.

“You better believe it was tough,” said Delobel, who had gained close to 20 pounds during pregnancy. “It was really a physical challenge, but I’m proud to have managed it.”

A four-month timetable for returning to elite competition after childbirth is far more compressed than usual but not without precedent. Laura Flessel, a French fencing star, won a silver at the world championship four months after giving birth. The tennis player Lindsay Davenport returned to the tour just under three months after giving birth to her first child. But there has been no one quite like Delobel in figure skating, the closest perhaps being the Canadian pairs skater Kristy Sargeant, who returned to competition within a year.

“In the Canadian military, there have been some studies done, and it is three to four months to reach prepregnancy physical levels with an uncomplicated pregnancy in a fit person,” said Julia Alleyne, the chief medical adviser for Skate Canada, who has written extensively on exercise and pregnancy. “Certainly anything under 12 weeks just doesn’t work.”

It helps that ice dancers, unlike singles and pairs skaters, do not perform jumps. But it is certainly an athletic endeavor. Alleyne said joint stability was affected by hormones that increased with pregnancy and breast-feeding. Delobel maintained fitness throughout her pregnancy and had a complication-free delivery, but she continued to breast-feed until December, longer than some of her sports advisers recommended.

But after skipping the European championships last month to continue practicing in Lyon, Delobel and Schoenfelder are back on the ice in Vancouver for their first competition in 14 months.