“It was such great news for me, really unexpected,” Slesarenko, who turns 30 next month, was quoted as saying by the country’s athletics federation on Thursday.  

  “Me and my husband had wanted to become parents after the 2008 Beijing Games but the Olympic competition took a lot out of me and I first had to take care of my injured body.”  

  Slesarenko, who set a national record of 2,06 metres to win gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics but finished fourth in Beijing, said she was a bit sad to be missing London.  

  “My good friend (2004 Olympic long jump champion) Tatyana Lebedeva, who was one of the first to get the news from me, had told me ‘it’s a luxury to become pregnant in the Olympic year because not every female athlete could afford it’,” she said.  

  “Probably, I would have liked to have it like this: compete in London, win the gold, then have a baby, then come back and start training for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.”  

  Slesarenko said she wanted to stay in the sport for at least four more years and hoped to emulate fellow Russian high jumper Anna Chicherova, who won her first global title at last year’s world championships in Daegu several months after the birth of her first child.  

  “Her example really motivates me,” said Slesarenko, who has also won two world indoor titles.  

  “We know each other very well because we used to train in the same group and I know how happy Anna was to become a mother and it had given her extra strength and emotion to come back into the sport. I hope I could do the same.”