The risks of continuing participation in contact sports during pregnancy may be much lower than previously assumed, according to a University of Alberta pregnancy researcher who says the benefits to mental health and postpartum recovery may compel athletes to stay with their sport deeper into pregnancy.
"We had an athlete reach out to us who was wanting to play her retirement game just three days past the accepted 12-week gestation cutoff, unsure of the actual risk," says Margie Davenport, a leading pregnancy researcher in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation. "When we looked for research to guide her, there was essentially nothing."
Current recommendations advise pregnant athletes to stop contact sports at the end of the first trimester due to perceived risks. However, Davenport's team discovered these guidelines were based on conventional wisdom — relying mainly on decades-old car crash injury statistics.
In collaboration with the FIFA Women's Development Program, Davenport led a survey to gather data from 395 athletes, predominantly soccer players — from recreational to professional levels across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States — who continued to engage in contact sports during pregnancy.
Participants reported a remarkable 11,687.2 hours of contact exposure during their pregnancies. And although 84 of them experienced a "hard hit" — an impact significant enough to recall and cause concern — the overall rate of adverse events was exceptionally low: 1.11 per 1,000 hours of exposure. Out of nearly 12,000 hours, only 13 adverse events were reported, including injuries, some instances of bleeding and, critically, just one miscarriage.
"From my perspective, this was quite shocking," says Davenport. "Having been in this field for two decades, I, like many, assumed that a hard hit during pregnancy would not go well. Our data show the risk is low. It's not zero — it's just far less than generally perceived."
