The Antwerp-born champion – who has also competed in the long jump and pentathlon – made the announcement on her 32nd birthday, eight months after giving birth to daughter Lotte and 14 months after announcing her retirement.

“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 on her blog. “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 would assess in April which competitions she would enter. The European Indoor Championships of 2011 in Paris would be the first big target, but she already hopes to be ready to compete at an international level this summer. “I have nothing more to prove, and I will concentrate on my own challenges,” she said. “If everything goes well, I want to continue in the sport until the London Olympic Games in 2012.”

Hellebaut will be following in the footsteps of tennis stars Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin, who both announced their return to the WTA tour last year. Their comebacks were met with instantaneous success, as Clijsters won the US Open last year in only her third tournament following her return, while Henin reached the Australian Open final last month.