Olympic snowboarder’s widow Ellidy Pullin welcomes baby girl via IVF 15 months after his death

More than a year after Alex “Chumpy” Pullin died, his partner Ellidy has given birth to their daughter, she announced in an Instagram post. Ellidy Pullin used in vitro fertilization after the former Olympian and two-time world champion snowboarder died while spearfishing in Australia.  

Ellidy Pullin welcomed Minnie Alex Pullin on October 25, nearly four months after announcing she was pregnant on Instagram.

“Bubba Chump coming this October,” Ellidy Pullin wrote in a post in June. “Your Dad and I have been dreaming of you for years little one. With a heart wrenching plot twist in the middle, I am honoured to finally welcome a piece of the phenomenon that is Chumpy back into this world!”

Chumpy Pullin, 32, went spearfishing at Palm Beach reef in Queensland, Australia, in July 2020, and was “pulled unconscious from the water,” Ellidy Pullin told Vogue Australia in an interview last month.

She also told Vogue about her decision to do in vitro fertilization after her partner died.

“Chumpy and I had been trying for a baby for nine months before the accident, and, like many couples, were hoping for a positive pregnancy test each month,” she said. “We were beginning to consider our options and had started to think about IVF. In the immediate hours following Chumpy’s accident, a close friend gently floated the idea of sperm retrieval. With the support of Chumpy’s family, it wasn’t a question of ‘if’ but ‘how’.”

She told Vogue that local guidelines required them to retrieve the sperm within 36 hours of his death. And even then, there were a host of specialists and lawyers she had to speak with in order to use his sperm.

“It’s only with the benefit of time, that I truly understand the enormous amount of effort my family, friends, lawyers, and doctors put in, in those critical hours after Chump passed away, to give me the opportunity to continue our dream of starting a family,” she said.

Ellidy Pullin’s first round of IVF, which she began in December, wasn’t successful, she told Vogue. But her second round two months later was.

“When my love had his accident, we all held onto hope that I’d be pregnant that month,” she wrote on Instagram when announcing her pregnancy. “We’d been trying for a baby. IVF was on our cards but it wasn’t something I ever imagined I’d be tackling on my own. Bittersweet like none other, I’ve never been more certain or excited about anything in my entire life.”