It’s going to be a productive year in European sports. I mean in the reproductive sense. You see, some of the best European sports celebrities are becoming first-time fathers this year.

Let’s start with the Swiss tennis star Roger Federer. He and his wife (yes, they are married!) Mirka are expecting. They got married very, very quietly over Easter (April 11) and announced the event on his official website.

Then there is Wayne Rooney, England’s 23-year old star footballer. His wife Coleen is expecting. Rumor has it that the baby is due on October 10 when England will be playing against Ukraine in a World Cup qualifying game. Babies do really pick their dates well, huh? The Sun reports that Coleen is considering an elective C-section before the game so Wayne wouldn’t have to choose between playing and being with her. In the English Premiere League, Wayne plays for Manchester United and has a reputation of being a bad boy. Let’s hope fatherhood will improve his behavior on and off the field.

Next comes the Spanish Formula-1 driver Fernando Alonso and singer Raquel del Rosario. They, too, are rumored to be expecting. Alonso was F-1 world champion twice (2005 and 2006) and currently drives for Renault.

When Dara Torres (US), and Constantina Tomescu (Romania) won medals last week in swimming and marathon, respectively, nobody batted an eyelid. Why should they? Many other women like them -Paula Radcliffe (UK, long distance runner) and Lindsay Davenport (US, tennis player), to name a few – have achieved athletic feats not unheard of in this day and age.

What all these women have in common is that they are older than your average competitive sportsperson but are still competing at the Beijing Olympics. At 38, Constantina is the oldest marathon winner in Olympic history while 41-year old Dara is the oldest ever member of the US Olympic swimming team. Paula and Lindsay are both over 30.

And – they are all moms. While many of us juggle between job and kids, these women have to juggle between demanding physical training and kids. That’s the way to go nowadays. No problem.

But let’s go back 60 years and 15 Olympic Games ago in London in 1948 – to the woman who paved the way – Francina Blankers-Koen. This Dutch athlete, better known as “Fanny” had a lot stacked against her. She had to live through the second World War, a time when food was scarce, therefore extra hard for athletes in training. She was a woman at a time when sporting bodies were exclusively male who simply tolerated female athletes. She was 30 years old, a very ripe age in field and track athletics. And – she had two young children during an era when a mother’s place should be at her children’s side and nowhere else. Something that helped through was her determination to succeed and the support of her husband-coach.

War, food shortage, pregnancies, 2 small children – these were not the best ingredients for an athlete’s training. Remember, this was a time when athletes were not allowed to do endorsements or accept any kind of commercial support. While Fanny trained on the track, her kids played in the high-jump area – a perfect sandpit! – according to the Independent. For her unconventional parenting style, Fanny got lots of hate mail – plus the fact that she wore short trousers while training.

Fanny went on to win 4 gold medals in the 1948 London Olympics. She could have won more if not for the Olympic rule at that time than women were limited to competing in 3 individual events only. Public opinion was divided – admiration for her feats and condemnation for shirking on her motherly duties – her youngest was 2 years old during the London games. To show this rather grudging appreciation of her achievements, she was dubbed by the international media as “The Flying Housewife“, “flying” for her athletic prowess and “housewife” to put her in her place.

What even made her story remarkable is the birth of her 3^rd child in 1949 just a few months after she came home victorious from London. She was actually in the very stages of pregnancy during the competition, according to the Independent . Whether she knew about her condition was not clear. At any rate, had her condition been known by the sports authorities, she wouldn’t have been allowed to compete.

Fanny went on to compete in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. In her time, she set 16 world records in 8 different disciplines. The crowning glory to her amazing athletic career was being voted as the “Female Athlete of the 20th Century” by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1999.

As the 2008 Beijing Olympics continue, some faces are becoming so familiar to the average viewer they know them without an identifying caption: Michael Phelps, Dara Torres, Kobe Bryant, Katie Hoff, LeBron James, Debbie Phelps.

Oh wait, you think to yourself, Michael Phelps has a sister in the Olympics?

No, Debbie Phelps is Michael’s mother, and every time he is in a final, or a semifinal, or a qualifying match, or on a podium, the television cameras inevitably find her, and when they do, the commentator is always there with something along the lines of, “Imagine how proud she is right now. Think of all the sacrifices she made taking him to the pool when he was younger.”

But parents are not only watching from the stands. Some of them are watching from the sidelines, standing alongside their children as they compete, coaching them. There are three such pairs on the US gymnastics team: Nastia Liukin and her father Valeri, Chellsie Memmel with father Andy, and Sasha Arteme coached by his father Vladimir.

Sometimes, the partnership isn’t by design. Liukin only took over after another coach gave his daughter a black eye, and Memmel sought her father’s guidance and expertise after a disappointing season. But whatever the origins, all three Olympians say it benefits them not only as athletes, but as individuals. Because their coaches are also their parents, they can offer more emotional support than a typical unrelated coach, and it also brings parent and child closer together.

Source: Fatherly advice goes a long way via USA Today.

The Olympic Games is the most prestigious sporting event in the world, and as well as inspiring athletes to compete for gold, it’s also inspiring baby names across the world.

In China, perhaps to show their pride in hosting the Games, 3,500 babies have been named Aoyun, which means “Olympics” in Mandarin. And, over 4,000 children have been named after the Olympic Games’ mascots, Bei Bei the fish (880 people), Jing Jing the panda (1,240 people), Huan Huan the Olympic flame (1,063 people), Ying Ying the Tibetan antelope (624 people) and Ni Ni the swallow (642 people).

Here in the US, there are lots of baby names inspired by the Olympic Games’ history, athletes and traditions.

The Olympic Games began in Greece, so a source of inspiration is the Greek gods. What about names like Athena, Hera, and Venus for girls, and Jupiter or Apollo for boys?

Athletes with distinctive names inspire names too. For boys, Jesse, after Jesse Owens, the African-American athlete who dominated the track and field events at the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany, and infuriated Hitler by shattering the Nazi idea of white supremacy in front of the watching world. And for girls, The popularity of Mia is partly due to Mia Hamm, winner of three medals for soccer.

Here’s more Olympic inspired baby names.

Would you pick an Olympic Games-inspired name for your baby?

Many parents?like myself?have long viewed sports as a positive part of childhood. My son has participated in soccer, basketball and/or baseball for many years. I thought they were a way to teach him responsibility, teamwork, respect for adult authority figures, physical fitness, and more. But it seems like the message didn’t get through to some of these sports superstars.

I just heard the National Football League announce that it was going to scrutinize game tapes to look for suspicious hand gestures made by players. And we’re not talking about a one-finger salute.

It seems they’re worried that some professional football players may also be gang members, and may be throwing gang signs during the game. One more reason not to trust them as role models.

Last year, Darrent Williams, a cornerback for the Denver Broncos, was shot and killed by known street gang members, prompting the NFL’s concern. And the trouble isn?t limited to football. Just this April, the Boston Celtics’ Paul Pierce received a $25,000 fine for two “menacing gestures” toward the Atlanta Hawks’ bench.

These incidents join a host of misbehaviors by professional athletes, and I’m fed up. Gangs, DWIs, steroids and other drugs, fights?need I go on? Not that I have ever encouraged my son to look to sports figures for lessons in life, but I just wish that I could.

I used to think I?d like my son to participate in high school sports for all the reasons listed above. Also, ?they? used to say that student athletes got better grades and stayed out of trouble because they had a place to belong, had something to do with their time and energy, and they had coaches that kept them in line. But the problems are trickling down, and even at the high school level, athletics are big bucks and high stakes. I recently heard a public school teacher advocate that a community build a bigger high school (instead of two smaller ones) even though bigger schools tend to have lower educational success, so that the new school could compete at the 5A level. What?s wrong here?

But really, I?m not here to complain. What I want is for parents to take back the games for our own kids. Where do we begin?