by Jacquelyn Thayer
Sweden’s Magda Mauroy Julin, the woman who captured figure skating gold at the 1920 Summer Olympics, 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…
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