The Olympics of Motherhood
Figure skater Magda Julin, and the ins and outs of skating while pregnant
Sweden’s Magda Mauroy Julin, the woman who captured figure skating gold at the 1920 Summer Olympics1, is generally remembered through two pieces of trivia. She was, until the 2022 Olympics, the only woman to win a skating title without placing first in either segment of the competition. And at those first Games after World War I, held just 17 months after Armistice—and from which athletes hailing from the Central Powers were barred—Magda's planned free program to the Austrian “Blue Danube Waltz” was deemed offensive, requiring a last-minute change of music.
But this is not the more unusual factoid you'll encounter about Magda. Five months after that competition, she gave birth to son Per Åke—meaning she won an individual Olympic title in her second trimester of pregnancy.
Biographical details on Magda are sketchy and require a bit of a deep dive into non-English-language sources. What can be reasonably confirmed is that she was born July 24, 1894, to Swedish music producer Carl Henrik Edvard Mauroy and Frenchwoman Anne-Marie Roux, and at some point before the 1920 Games married Per Johan Emanuel Julin, a sea captain twenty years her senior. After Per Johan’s death in 1922, she would in 1925 wed Per Johan’s brother,2 Fredrik Emanuel, and have another son, Bo.
What is also missing from the record are Magda’s thoughts on competing while pregnant, or—as she would do at 1921’s Nordic Championships—as a new mother. Even today, the phenomenon is treated as an outstanding circumstance, and most often talked about in accounts of women in more stationary sports like shooting and archery. A century ago, and with fewer athletic opportunities for women, it was even less common—or at least commonly reported.
In skating, it’s particularly rare. It’s possible that only a decade after Magda’s accomplishment, pair skater Andrée Joly Brunet joined her ranks; she and husband Pierre Brunet won the World Championships in February 1930 and delivered their son Jean-Pierre in September of that year.
But most publicly confirmed instances have involved skaters performing in less-demanding shows while pregnant, or training while taking a hiatus from full competition. French ice dancer and world champion Isabelle Delobel trained for the 2010 Olympics—held in February—into the seventh month of her pregnancy with son Loïs, born in October 2009; a few months later, retired Canadian ice dancer (and former Delobel training mate and coach) Marie-France Dubreuil toured with Stars on Ice during the first trimester of her pregnancy with daughter Billie-Rose. In 2019, Canadian pair skater, world champion, and Olympic medalist Meagan Duhamel was a year removed from competition when she performed in Stars on Ice through her fourth month of pregnancy with daughter Zoey, while in 2021 Russian pair skater and world and Olympic champion Tatiana Volosozhar competed in the TV show Ice Age—essentially a skating version of Dancing With the Stars—in the first half of pregnancy with son Theo.
Skating is a sport of certain risks even for its most expert athletes. Falls are not uncommon—ice is slippery, a common saying goes—and jarring falls more so for those in singles and pairs, who jump. In pairs, the female partner is also thrown in what could be seen as a sort of assisted, particularly propulsive jump. Skating also depends on a comfortable center of gravity, as athletes must balance on blades as well as execute rotations—jumps, spins, twizzles—and, in ice dance and pairs, carry or be carried in lifts.
Duhamel, in an interview for this piece, noted having to frequently re-identify her own center of gravity while skating in a few shows a week. "Because I wasn’t jumping, it was OK; I could do that easier with the lifts and the death spirals and the spins that were required for pairs skating," she said. "But it was like a constant, oh, this week, I feel this, and now I feel this. By the end of the tour, when I was almost four months pregnant, I remember saying, 'I don’t think I could go another week now.' Like, I don’t think somebody could lift me over their head for another week, and for me to have the type of core control I needed."
In 1920, and particularly for a singles skater, certain of these potential issues were minimized. Much of skating was still focused on compulsory figures, patterns traced over the ice and judged in their own competitive segment. The free skate, which comprised the second half of a major singles skating competition, was also mostly concerned with footwork. Jumps were not yet a required element and when executed, were only rotated once, or were simpler and more decorative in form, like split jumps. They were also rarely performed by women, considered indelicate. None of that is to suggest, however, that competitive skating even in its earlier days didn’t entail considerable effort. One 1916 article promoting skating for women included advice from world and Olympic champion Madge Syers:
Mrs. Syers thinks that dance steps should always form a considerable part [of a free program], and urges that it is well to remember that if any particularly difficult figures are to be included they should be introduced before the muscles become fatigued. For though to the onlooker four or five minutes’ free skating, when demonstrated by an expert, may seem, from its very excellence, an effortless proceeding, it is in reality very hard work, and is a good test of the condition of the skater.3
Though still decades removed from the advancements in elite women’s sport that would come in the latter half of the twentieth century, the 1910s and ‘20s were something of a revolutionary period for females in sport.4 In 1910, a health guide for girls and women observed that “The present generation is witness to a remarkable change in the attitude of public opinion towards physical exercise for girls,” and that, for skating in particular,
There is nothing which shows the difference between past and present so strongly as the change in public opinion as regards the propriety of skating for girls. In our grandmothers’ time it was considered almost as indecorous as the flying trapeze. [...] [S]eventy-five years ago a strong, robust girl would have found no favor in the eyes of the other sex.5
Similarly, the value of exercise in pregnancy was also recognized as critical to the health of mother and child alike. While 1903’s The Practice of Obstetrics cautioned against “jars of every kind [...], especially jumping, even from slight elevations, and overstretching, such as straining the arms upward in reaching for an object, as hanging pictures,”6 1917’s The Healthy Marriage advised active women that
If healthy, then, pregnancy need make no difference to exercise. […] Even if unhealthy and liable to miscarriages, a woman is more likely to keep in that stage of ill-health that affects the womb to miscarriage by taking no exercise than by exercise she is likely to cause a miscarriage.7
The universally recommended form of exercise was the daily outdoor walk of, preferably, at least two miles. 1923’s Preparing for Motherhood further recommends “strength-building” exercises through the first two trimesters—more like mobility training than weight-lifting—for the average mother, with a special note for athletes:
As a general thing, the athletic woman should not attempt any special strength-building work, inasmuch as she may already have developed a somewhat muscle-bound condition. The athletic woman, especially, should strive for elasticity, and even relaxation of tissues, at least during her first pregnancy. She needs little or no special training still further to strengthen the pelvic region.
All the same, certain activities were variously off-limits, depending on the author: swimming,8 lawn tennis, rowing, lifting heavy objects, dancing, wearing old corsets during shopping trips,9 using a sewing machine,10 and engaging in “violent exertion of any kind.”11 Many guides agreed on the risks of horseback and bicycle riding, but even then, exception could be made for the skilled rider in the first months. 1924’s Obstetrical Nursing suggests both horse and bicycles were “not unusually harmful” in such cases, and 1916’s Obstetrics goes a step further:
It is well known that some women can indulge in almost any form of exercise without interrupting pregnancy and recently one of my patients who was fond of exercise and of horses, not knowing she was pregnant had been enjoying the sport of ‘breaking’ some bucking horses up to the time when she came to me to find out why she did not menstruate. She was then three months pregnant and went to term with a perfectly normal pregnancy and puerperium.12
The risks—or benefits—of skating seemed to go sadly unaddressed, but one could presume similar guidance here: general strong cautions against for the amateur, perhaps slightly more lenience for the expert, especially in the absence of jumps.
A century later, what advice can today's skating mother anticipate? Well, from the general media, pieces like this December 2021 article on pregnancy and motherhood site Romper.com, which relies on medical advice to warn both amateur and experienced skaters against the risks of the sport to both mother and child. Duhamel, though, like other elite athletes of more recent decades, was given an all-clear to skate during her own pregnancy.
"I was told that I could keep skating as long as I wanted to," she said. While still performing triple jumps and throws at the beginning of her pregnancy, she followed her own instincts to remove those higher risk elements later in the first trimester. This, too, reflected medical advice. “You’re fine. As long as you feel stable and safe, go for it,” she was told. “So that was what I was advised to do.”
Competing or performing during pregnancy is, of course, only half the challenge for mothers in sport. They then must balance the demands of a full-time training regimen, along with travel to events throughout the year, with motherhood, a feat accomplished by full-time competitors like Russian ice dancer and world and Olympic champion Tatiana Navka. Duhamel intended to continue a professional show skating career with former competitive partner Eric Radford until Radford announced a new partnership in April 2021, citing, in part, Duhamel’s having “started a family” as one reason for the new venture.13
“I’m pregnant again now, but between babies, I was in good shape,” she said. “I could have gone back to competition, no problem, or professional shows. I did a reality television show [Battle of the Blades] where I taught a hockey player how to skate. We did triples, throw triples, and twists. We won. And that was post-baby. So you can definitely have a professional career after having a child.”
But what challenges would Magda Julin have faced a century earlier? Despite leaving such a faint record during her own competition days, in a 1988 interview with Icelandic paper Tíminn, she attributed her retirement not to the demands of motherhood, but to the politics of figure skating—which may or may not have included reaction to her new role:
Magda won one Olympic medal, twice became the Nordic champion and three times the Swedish champion, but then she stopped competing. That was in 1921. Having been champion in her country three times, she didn't get the chance to compete any more. She didn't think it was fair and said she did not find justice in the fact that a champion is not allowed to defend her title.
Magda then characterized figure skating with a phrase that can be translated in a few ways—“lonely gangsterism” is one colorful alternative—but gives a general gist:
“This is a solitary clique in the sport, but you should not write it,” Magda told the journalist, who of course wrote it down immediately.14
The first separate Winter Olympics were held in 1924. Before that, figure skating was contested as part of the Summer Olympics in 1908 and 1920, though held separately from the summer contests. In 1920, the figure skating competition, along with debut event ice hockey, took place in April.
“The Graceful Pastime of Skating,” The Lotus Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 4, January 1916.
Syers was one icon paving the way. In 1902, in the absence of an international skating competition for women, but no regulations actually prohibiting females from entering a given event, she simply competed against the—and won. Though the International Skating Union initially responded to her impertinence with a ban on women's entries, in 1905, the organization voted to create a world championship-level competition for women.
Caroline Wormeley Latimer, Girl and Woman: A Book for Mothers and Daughters, New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1910.
James Clifton Edgar, The Practice of Obstetrics: Designed for the Use of Students and Practitioners of Medicine, Philadelphia: Publishers Syndicate Company, 1903.
G. T. Wrench, The Healthy Marriage: A Medical and Psychological Guide for Wives, New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1917.
John M. Keating, Maternity, Infancy, Childhood, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1887/1915.
Charles Sumner Bacon, Obstetrical Nursing: A Manual for Nurses and Students and Practitioners of Medicine, Philadelphia and New York: Lea & Febiger, 1924.
Recommended against by both Obstetrical Nursing and Maternity, Infancy, Childhood.
Bernarr MacFadden, Preparing for Motherhood: A Guide for the Expectant Mother to Her Care and Training, New York City: MacFadden Publications, Inc., 1923.
Edwin Bradford Cragin, Obstetrics: A Practical Text-Book for Students and Practitioners, Philadelphia and New York: Lea & Febiger, 1916.
Jacqueline Doorey, “Pairs skater Eric Radford ends retirement to team up with Vanessa James,” CBC.ca, April 21, 2021.