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Understated Mainoo Vital as England Reach Euro 2024 Final

England midfielder Kobbie Mainoo (R) put in a superb display as his team beat the Netherlands to reach the Euro 2024 final. INA FASSBENDER / AFP
England midfielder Kobbie Mainoo (R) put in a superb display as his team beat the Netherlands to reach the Euro 2024 final. INA FASSBENDER / AFP
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Understated Mainoo Vital as England Reach Euro 2024 Final

England midfielder Kobbie Mainoo (R) put in a superb display as his team beat the Netherlands to reach the Euro 2024 final. INA FASSBENDER / AFP
England midfielder Kobbie Mainoo (R) put in a superb display as his team beat the Netherlands to reach the Euro 2024 final. INA FASSBENDER / AFP

Spain youngster Lamine Yamal showered himself in glory by firing his team into the Euro 2024 final but England had their own, rather more understated, teenager to thank in Kobbie Mainoo for helping secure a berth in the Berlin showpiece on Sunday.
The 19-year-old's sterling performance ensured England reached a second consecutive Euros final with a 2-1 semi-final win over the Netherlands in Dortmund on Wednesday, AFP said.
Mainoo played a vital role in England's midfield as the Three Lions produced their finest performance in Germany this summer.
Bidding to win their first major trophy since the 1966 World Cup, Gareth Southgate's side desperately needed to improve after scraping into the final four.
Finding his footing at the core of the team is Manchester United midfielder Mainoo.
He made his Premier League debut in January 2023 at 17, only breaking through in the 2023-24 season with his club.
Mainoo became the youngest ever England player to play in the semi-finals of a major tournament and showed exactly why Southgate has put his faith in him.
He began the tournament as third choice for the position -- after the coach dropped Trent Alexander-Arnold, he turned to Chelsea's Connor Gallagher against Slovenia in England's third group game.
It was not working at half-time so Southgate turned to Mainoo and hasn't looked back.
The midfielder has become Southgate's solution to a problem position, having previously lamented the lack of a new Kalvin Phillips or Jordan Henderson.
Mainoo put in assured performances against Slovakia and Switzerland but his best display so far -- and not coincidentally, England's -- was against the Dutch in Dortmund.
"I think all of his performances have been exceptional, especially when you consider his age," Southgate told reporters.
"We haven't really had a player like him until now. It makes such a difference when your midfield players can receive (while being) pressed, turn with the ball so easily and comfortably.
"I thought him, Phil (Foden) popping up in spaces, Jude (Bellingham), our movement was really good. It caused a lot of problems and them to adapt without the ball."
Futsal background
Mainoo, who attributes his slick ability on the ball to his past playing futsal, the five-a-side small-pitch game requiring high levels of technique and skill, helped England dominate their opponents in the first half.
The Manchester United midfielder pinned the Netherlands deep in their own territory by aggressively putting heavy pressure on the ball every time they tried to break loose.
England benefitted from a slice of luck after Xavi Simons blasted Netherlands ahead when Harry Kane won a soft penalty, but after the England captain converted it to level the score, their superiority was evident.
With Mainoo pulling the strings in midfield it was hard for the Dutch to win the ball back and England boasted a higher possession at full time, with Ollie Watkins' 91st-minute strike saving them from a third successive period of extra-time.
"It will be, I would imagine, a long time since -- or if ever -- an English side had 60 percent of the ball against a side from the Netherlands," said Southgate.
"It shows the more modern England way and the resilience and the character of the group."
Mainoo's rise to prominence has even surprised those close to him by its speed.
Luke Shaw, his team-mate for club and country, said ahead of the Netherlands game that his "growth is scary" and that Mainoo has "the world at his feet".
That was laid bare on a heady night in Dortmund which propelled him to new heights, with the biggest game of his career awaiting in Berlin on Sunday.
Mainoo will have his work cut out against the team-of-the-tournament Spain in the final. La Roja midfielders Rodri Hernandez and Fabian Ruiz have been two of the stars of the summer.
However, Mainoo and Manchester United got the better of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City in the FA Cup final in May, with the young midfielder scoring what proved to be the winner.
Asking for a repeat of that would be too much but Southgate will be delighted if he can just reproduce his near flawless display against the Netherlands.

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Competing for Two: Pregnant Olympians Push the Boundaries of Possibility in Paris 

Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)
Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)
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Competing for Two: Pregnant Olympians Push the Boundaries of Possibility in Paris 

Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)
Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)

Many Olympic athletes take to Instagram to share news of their exploits, trials, victories and heartbreaks. After her fencing event ended last week, Egypt’s Nada Hafez shared a little bit more.

She’d been fencing for two, the athlete revealed — and in fact had been pregnant for seven months.

“What appears to you as two players on the podium, they were actually three!” Hafez wrote, under an emotional picture of her during the match. “It was me, my competitor, & my yet-to-come to our world, little baby!” Mom (and baby) finished the competition ranked 16th, Hafez's best result in three Olympics.

A day later, an Azerbaijani archer was also revealed on Instagram to have competed while six-and-a-half months pregnant. Yaylagul Ramazanova told Xinhua News she'd felt her baby kick before she took a shot — and then shot a 10, the maximum number of points.

There have been pregnant Olympians and Paralympians before, though the phenomenon is rare for obvious reasons. Still, most stories have been of athletes competing when they’re far earlier in their pregnancies — or not even far enough along to know they were expecting.

Like US beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh Jennings, who won her third gold medal while, unknowingly, five weeks pregnant with her third child.

“When I was throwing my body around fearlessly, and going for gold for our country, I was pregnant,” she said on “Today” after the London Games in 2012. She and husband Casey (also a beach volleyball player) had only started trying to conceive right before the Olympics, she said, figuring it would take time. But she felt different, and volleyball partner Misty May-Treanor said to her — presciently, it turned out — “You're probably pregnant.”

It makes sense that pregnant athletes are pushing boundaries now, one expert says, as both attitudes and knowledge develop about what women can do deep into pregnancy.

“This is something we’re seeing more and more of,” says Dr. Kathryn Ackerman, a sports medicine physician and co-chair of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee's women’s health task force, “as women are dispelling the myth that you can’t exercise at a high level when you’re pregnant.”

Ackerman notes there's been little data, and so past decisions on the matter have often been arbitrary. But, she says, “doctors now recommend that if an athlete is in good condition going into pregnancy, and there are no complications, then it's safe to work out, train, and compete at a very high level.” An exception, she says, might be something like ski racing, where the risk of a bad fall is great.

But in fencing, says the Boston-based Ackerman, there is clearly protective padding for athletes, and in less physically strenuous sports like archery or shooting, there's absolutely no reason a woman can't compete.

It’s not just an issue of physical fitness, of course. It is deeply emotional. Deciding whether and how to compete while trying to also grow a family is a thorny calculus that male athletes simply don’t have to consider — at least in anywhere near the same way.

Just ask Serena Williams, who famously won the Australian Open in 2017 while pregnant with her first child. When, some five years later, she wanted to try for a second, she stepped back from tennis — an excruciating decision.

“Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” Williams — who won four Olympic golds — wrote in a Vogue essay. “I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family. Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity.”

Williams welcomed Adira River Ohanian in 2023, joining older sister Olympia. And Olympia was the name that US softball player Michele Granger's mother reportedly suggested for the baby Granger was carrying when she pitched the gold-medal winning game in Atlanta in 1996. Her husband suggested the name Athena. Granger preferred neither.

“I didn't want to make that connection with her name,” said Granger to Gold Country Media in 2011. The baby was named Kady.

At the Paris fencing venue over the weekend, fans were mixed between admiration for the bravery and determination of Hafez, a 26-year-old former gymnast with a degree in medicine, and speculation about whether it was risky.

“There are certainly sports that are less violent,” said Pauline Dutertre, 29, sitting outside the elegant Grand Palais during a break in action alongside her father, Christian. Dutertre had competed herself on the international circuit in saber until 2013. “It is, after all, a combat sport.”

“In any case,” she noted, “it is courageous. Even without making it to the podium, what she did was brave.”

Marilyne Barbey, attending the fencing from Annecy in southeastern France with her family, wondered about safety too, but added: “You can fall anywhere, at any time. And, in the end, it is her choice.”

Ramazanova, who was visibly pregnant when competing, also earned admiration, including from her peers. She reached the final 32 in her event.

Casey Kaufhold, an American who earned bronze in the mixed team category, said it was “really cool” to see her Azerbaijani colleague achieving what she did.

“I think it’s awesome that we see more expecting mothers shooting in the Olympic Games and it’s great to have one in the sport of archery,” she said in comments to The Associated Press. “She shot really well, and I think it’s really cool because my coach is also a mother and she’s been doing so much to support her kids even while she’s away."

Kaufhold said she hoped Ramazanova's run would inspire more mothers and expectant mothers to compete. And she had a more personal thought for the mom-to-be:

“I think it’s awesome for this archer that one day, she can tell her kid, ‘Hey, I went to the Olympic Games and you were there, too.’”