Pregnancy proves the charm for Para judoka Nicolina Pernheim Goodrich in her breakthrough at fifth Paralympic Games
The Swedish athlete continued training until she was seven months pregnant and returned to the tatami seven weeks after giving birth to her first child.
Thirty years in Para judo, four Paralympic Games, countless training partners and still the Paralympic medal eluded Nicolina Pernheim Goodrich.
At Paris 2024, she broke through at last – and in the least likely circumstances of all. The Swedish Para athlete won a bronze medal in the women’s -70kg J1 seven months after giving birth to her first child, daughter Selma.
The 2022 European champion was training hard ahead of Paris 2024 when she discovered that she and her husband, fellow Para judoka and Tokyo 2020 silver medallist Benjamin Goodrich, were expecting a baby.
Suddenly Pernheim Goodrich was not sure if she would be able to go to the Games, least of all compete for a medal there.
"When I got pregnant, I was like, 'Is this going to work? Can I still go to the Games?' And my family, my mom and my husband convinced me that you should give it a go, you should try. And I did try and I did it," Pernheim Goodrich told Olympics.com.
"This was my goal. I wanted a medal and now I have a medal, and it's amazing. And I'm just so happy, so happy."
The Para judo power couple: A romance forged during Covid-19
Benjamin Goodrich, himself a two-time Paralympian for Team USA, understood his wife’s wish to keep chasing that elusive Paralympic medal despite her recent pregnancy.
The pair met at a competition in 2017 and started dating in 2018.
Covid-19 brought them closer together. Colorado-based Goodrich struggled to find sparring partners and spent most of the pandemic in Sweden where the restrictions on wearing masks and training in contact sports were not as strict, especially for professional athletes.
Despite a difference of nearly 40kg in their weight classes, the pair often trained together at the same club and helped each other to prepare for Tokyo 2020. Goodrich took silver in the men's -100kg division there, while Pernheim Goodrich finished seventh.
The two wed in January 2022 and welcomed their daughter just over a week after their two-year wedding anniversary, on 16 January.
Training during and after pregnancy
Pernheim Goodrich continued training throughout most of the pregnancy. Her technical training went on until November when she was seven months along.
"I've been training but I haven't, of course, been able to compete in judo because judo is judo, right? It's not good for the baby," Pernheim Goodrich said. "So I've been doing what I could, like weight training, conditioning. I've done judo technique as long as I possibly could."
Seven weeks after giving birth, Pernheim Goodrich was back on the tatami – and shocked by how different her body felt during the first sessions back.
"It felt so weird," she recalled. "My body didn't work. My arms, I couldn't pull with both arms at the same time and nothing worked really, and I was just laughing because I was so bad. I remember I was doing a cartwheel and I couldn't get my feet up and I was like, 'How did this happen? I'm so bad'. It's been a crazy change since then."
With time, the Para judoka started to regain her old form. The advice of coaches and physiotherapists was crucial in helping her make the comeback at a safe pace. Her own degree in physiotherapy also helped Pernheim Goodrich to better understand her limits.
"I had a lot of good support," she said. "Wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise. I've just been able to take small steps back and just continue those small steps until I went super fast."
Medal breakthrough at fifth Paralympic Games
Pernheim Goodrich has missed out on a medal at four previous Games, twice by a single spot.
She was fifth in her Paralympic debut at Beijing 2008, competing as a 17-year-old in the -70kg weight category. She made the switch to the -63kg class ahead of London 2012, where she finished seventh, was fifth at Rio 2016 and seventh again at Tokyo 2020.
Paris 2024 was a fifth attempt at a medal for the Swedish Para judoka. In addition to becoming a mother at the start of the Paralympic year, the Games were special in another way as well. These were the first Paralympics where fully blind judokas competed in separate events. At previous editions, athletes with different levels of vision impairments competed against each other divided only according to their weight categories.
For Pernheim Goodrich, who was born with a severe vision impairment and lost her sight completely as a teenager, this was a change she has long campaigned for and did not want to miss. Her husband understood that too.
"This was the first time in the J1 category, and he knows I'd been dreaming about that for a long time," Pernheim Goodrich said. "So now when it happened, he's like, 'You should do it'."
Nicolina Pernheim Goodrich in action during the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
Goodrich was at the Champ-de-Mars Arena on 6 September, together with his father-in-law, as his wife faced off against Türkiye’s Merve Uslu Hajabipour for the bronze medal. The athlete’s mother and daughter remained at the hotel.
"There's just so much noise, so it's not really good for her," Pernheim Goodrich said. "It would be fun for me, but not good for her. And that's the most important thing, that she's good."
The stands were packed and loud, but Pernheim Goodrich managed to block out the noise and keep her focus. She scored a waza-ari to start and an ippon to secure the long-awaited Paralympic medal.
Standing on the podium with the other medallists, the five-time Paralympian wiped off tears as the spectators, her husband and father among them, cheered for her accomplishment.
"It's just so much happiness," Pernheim Goodrich said of the moment. "I couldn't really believe it. I was thinking, 'I'm finally doing this. I'm finally here now'. It's just great."
