(Newser)
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Malaysian shooting champ Nur Suryani Mohamed isn't just the first pregnant woman to compete in a summer Olympics since 1920, she's so far along that she may become the first person to give birth at the Games. The 29-year-old athlete, who discovered that she was pregnant just two days before she qualified for the women's 10-meter air rifle event and will be eight months pregnant when she competes, had a hard time convincing Malaysian sports officials that she would be fit to travel and would be able to compete at her best. But they were won over after her performance actually improved during her pregnancy. At an event in Munich in May, she shot 396 out of a possible 400.
"One advantage that I’ve seen is that my stability increased—maybe because my gravity increased, my weight increased," she tells the New York Times. Before the event, she says, she will tell her in utero daughter: "Mum is going to shoot just for a while. Can you just be calm?" And someday, she will tell her: "You are very lucky; you were not born yet and you already went to the Olympics." The only previous pregnant summer Olympian was Sweden's Magda Julin, who won gold in figure skating in 1920, when it was still a summer sport. A German skeleton racer took fourth in the 2006 Winter Olympics while in her first trimester, and Canadian curler Kristie Moore was five months pregnant at Vancouver 2010.
