London - When Alysia Montano, 28, crossed the finish line in an 800m race last Wednesday, the crowd gave her a standing ovation. As I watched them leap to their feet to cheer the Olympian, the fastest 800m runner in the US, I was baffled by their applause.
Montano is 34 weeks pregnant, her unusually small bump crossing the finish line in front of her.
Afterwards, the mom-to-be said she “deserved” to take part in the race. Her medical team had approved of her decision, which she claimed was all about empowerment.
But as I watched her stride confidently around the track, all I felt was horror. Watching her race was almost as shocking as seeing a pregnant woman light a cigarette.
Instinctively, I felt that this was a selfish act. Where will it all end? Pregnant heli-skiing? Pregnant sky-diving? Bump-tastic Strictly Come Dancing?
And how does it make other pregnant women feel? The non-superwomen among us who can’t make it to the third step of the stairs in our first trimester without an arm to lean on and a fresh supply of nibbles?
Can we bear any more Alpha females to measure ourselves against? Any more giant shadows to walk in on our path to motherhood?
Sprint 800m six weeks before giving birth? I struggled to get my flip-flops on in less than an hour when I was pregnant.
But maybe my instantly negative reaction was wrong.
Maybe I was judging Alysia harshly when, actually, I should praise her, if only to smooth the path through life of my three daughters, who I hope will one day be moms, too.
Now that my eldest is nearly 12, I’m beginning to imagine her as an adult - and it’s terrifying. Only 10 minutes ago I was blowing raspberries on her chubby baby thighs and sniffing her soft, gingery head as she slept on me.
I would hate other women to criticise any of her future decisions.
After all, Montano is a career athlete; she was simply doing the job she has trained for all her life. It’s her body and her baby (her husband backed her up), so surely I shouldn’t even question her decision as aggressively as I did?
I was still contemplating this later in the week when a video called “running like a girl” became a news story. My moody pre-teen daughter and I watched it together, given that it was doing the rounds at her school.
The three-minute film shows how the phrase “like a girl” turns from being a positive description for any female under 13 to an insult for anyone over that age, undermining the confidence of a generation of young women. It showed pre-teen girls racing their hearts out to demonstrate what the phrase meant and older girls performing some form of parody of Alan Carr prancing about on stage.
“I do everything like a girl because I am one,” my daughter said, a little confused by the debate.
What a shame we have to keep reminding ourselves that being a girl does not mean being weak. If you made a film called “giving birth like a girl”, it would be pretty obvious how far from feeble women really are.
So I have reversed my opinion of sprinter Alysia Montano. She has become a hero in our overwhelmingly female household for giving new meaning to the phrase “running like a girl”.
Although Mr Candy did point out that pregnant women are prone to making inexplicable and unusual decisions. He used the phrase “unstable”, which I chose to ignore on this occasion. “If you recall,” he continued, with no thought for his own safety, “you spent the last week of your first pregnancy up a stepladder painting a ceiling until the early hours, or checking the skirting boards for holes in case a rat could get in and steal our baby.
“You put the phone in the fridge every day, left your keys in the front door several times and once walked to the shop without your shoes on. If someone had asked you to run an 800m race, you may well have said yes, too.”
Daily Mail