These five couples have a love story tied to the Summer Olympics
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Olympic love: Olympians winning more than just medals at the games
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Every four years, hundreds of athletes leave the Olympic Games with a medal or new personal best in competition.
Others return home with a new crush – or perhaps even an engagement ring.
Though the Olympics might not seem like a romantic occasion to the average sports fan, the Games have long been a place where relationship milestones are made. For some, it’s a chance meeting in the Olympic Village that later blossoms into love. For others, it’s a proposal on the podium – or, in one case, a wedding ceremony after competition. The Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled to begin July 23, promise to be no different.
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Here’s a look at some of the relationships in which the Summer Olympics has played a special role over the years.
Katerina and Matt Emmons
For American rifle shooter Matt Emmons, it was the ultimate blessing in disguise.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Emmons needed only a mediocre final shot in the 50-meter three-position event to win his second gold medal of the Games. Instead, he accidentally shot a neighboring competitor’s target, a gaffe that not only cost him the gold but knocked him off the podium altogether.
Afterwards, as the story goes, Emmons was sitting at a nearby beer garden when a Czech shooter named Katerina Kurkova and her father came up to him. They told Emmons they admired the way he handled the miss, and gave him a four-leaf clover keychain for good luck.
In the years that followed, Emmons and Kurkova wound up staying in touch. They married in 2007 and now split their time between the U.S. and the Czech Republic.
“Had I not made that mistake, maybe I retire from shooting, maybe I don’t marry Katy,” Emmons said in 2016. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Will Claye and Queen Harrison-Claye
American triple-jumper Will Claye didn’t know when, exactly, he wanted to propose to his then-girlfriend, American hurdler Queen Harrison.
Then he woke up on Aug. 16, 2016 – the day of the triple jump competition at the 2016 Rio Games – and just knew that it was going to be the best day of his life.
“I’m going to go out there and do what I have to do on the track first,” Claye later recalled to reporters, “and I am going to make her my fiancée after that.”
And that’s what happened. With Harrison, who just narrowly missed qualifying for the Rio Olympics, watching from the stands, Claye won a silver medal in triple jump before running into the stands and getting down on one knee.
“When he got down originally I thought maybe he dropped something,” Harrison later told NBC’s TODAY Show. “And he did – he dropped my jaw to the floor! Because I couldn’t believe he did that.”
The two were married in California in 2018 and have continued competing in the leadup to Tokyo, where Claye is the favorite to win gold.
Olympic triple jumper Will Claye on using his platform for good
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Mirka and Roger Federer
Years before Roger Federer won his first Grand Slam singles title, he was an 19-year-old Olympian with a big crush.
During a two-week stay in Sydney, where he was competing for Switzerland at the 2000 Summer Olympics, Federer found himself spending more time with Mirka Vavrinec, who was also representing Switzerland in tennis. He recalled in a 2019 interview with CNN that they were at the Olympic Village one day when another athlete, a wrestler, encouraged Federer to make the first move.
“And I’m like, ‘No. I don’t know. Maybe. Should I?'” Federer told the outlet.
He did, of course. The two were married nine years later, as Federer climbed the international rankings to become one of the most dominant tennis players ever. And they now have four children – two sets of twins.
Nikolai Prodanov and Diana Yorgova
Popping the question at the Olympic Games is one thing. Getting married in the Olympic Village is another.
For Bulgarian athletes Nikolai Prodanov and Diana Yorgova, an Olympic wedding was never really the plan. In fact, Prodanov, a gymnast, and Yorgova, a long jumper, had already picked out a wedding date several months after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, according to Olympics.com.
But when a Bulgarian diplomat learned of the lovebirds in his country’s Olympic delegation, he asked the couple if they would like to get married at the Tokyo Games, after finishing their respective competitions.
“I was very worried because I had imagined this day with our dearest ones – our parents, relatives and friends – but they were so far away,” Yorgova told Olympics.com. “Therefore, I was not only excited, but also secretly sad.”
Ultimately, though, Yorgova and Prodanov decided to embrace the unique opportunity. They were wed at the Yoyogi Olympic Village International Club, in front of the Olympic flag, before drinking sake and later taking the bullet train to Osaka and Kyoto for their honeymoon.
“We really felt like a fairytale princess and prince,” Yorgova told Olympics.com.
The two celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary last year. They now have two children and four grandchildren.
Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe
One was a nine-time all-star with two championship rings. The other helped lead the U.S. to an Olympic gold in 2012 and a World Cup win in 2015. Both played professionally in Seattle.
Yet, until a media event prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe had never really met.
As the two recalled at the 2017 ESPNW Women and Sports Summit, they chatted in passing at Team USA’s media summit, in the leadup to the Rio Games. Then, while in Brazil, they traded Instagram messages and spent time together at the U.S. women’s basketball team’s victory party after its gold medal win.
“It was on a ship, a big ballroom,” Bird’s teammate Diana Taurasi recalled to GQ earlier this year. “There were a lot of people, and Sue would just gravitate right back to (Megan’s) table.”
Within a few months, they were meeting up for drinks on the road, and soon thereafter, they officially became an item. Rapinoe later moved into Bird’s condo in Seattle. And the two got engaged last fall.
“I actually took one of the rings off my fingers and gave it to Sue,” Rapinoe said during an appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show.” “And I didn’t know exactly when I was gonna do it but just, like, the perfect moment presented itself.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: These five couples have a love story tied to the Summer Olympics