LONDON: She’s still expecting, even after finishing out of the medals in the opening event of the London Games.
After placing 34th out of 56 shooters in the women’s 10-meter air rifle on Saturday, Nur Suryani Mohd Taibi pronounced she’s ready to have her baby daughter in less than seven weeks back home in Malaysia.
She also was relieved not to go into labor.
“I just prayed that I could get to a labor room in time,” she said. “I would accept it with an open heart. I am not a normal mummy doing everything slowly.”
But slow and steady are a shooter’s calling card. The ability to stand still and fire at a bulls-eye the size of a coin 10 meters away puts Mohd Taibi in elite company, so her performance was all the more remarkable considering her baby was kicking her insides during the 75-minute morning qualifying shoot.
“Three or four times,” Mohd Taibi said. “It didn’t put me off. I told her, ‘Behave yourself, be a good girl, be calm, and don’t move so much.’“
Did she listen?
“Yep, she always listens to me.”
She and her supportive husband have already named the unborn child Dayana Widyan, who is due on Sept. 13, followed less than two weeks later by Mohd Taibi’s 30th birthday.
She said she’ll tell her daughter one day all about how she was with her at the London Games.
“I hope she’ll take part in sports,” Mohd Taibi said. “My blood is in her. Maybe she’ll be better than me.”
Just days after qualifying for the games, Mohd Taibi learned she was pregnant, but it never made her consider taking it easy.
“I did my best, but the range got the best of me today,” she said. “My dream came true. I got to take part in the Olympics.”
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