There is a local saying down here that seems to have lost a little in the translation. Nevertheless, it goes something like this.
“Romance is always in the air in Rio, but only until the wind changes, and then…comes more romance.”
Get your head around that if you can, but regardless it is clear that these Olympics have sparked a wave of feelings from the heart among competitors and visitors alike.
We have long heard tales of debauched Olympic tomfoolery in the athletes’ village — they brought in all those condoms for a reason. This time, however, there is a sweeter trend toward romantic gestures that are intended to be forever, not a fling to be extinguished along with the flame on Sunday.
Everyone, it seems, wants to get married.
Marjorie Enya did. A volunteer stadium manager at the rugby venue in Deodoro, Enya proposed to her girlfriend, Brazil women’s national team player Isadora Cerullo, on the playing field at the completion of the women’s competition, and got the answer she wanted.
That was the first of these Games, and news has reached Enya that there has been many since. “It seems everyone wants to get married,” she said.
Qin Kai and He Zi do. Qin, a Chinese diver who won bronze earlier in the Games, got down on bended knee with ring in hand as He stepped off the podium after winning silver in the women’s 3-meter springboard final on Sunday.
“I didn’t know he would do it (today),” He said, after tearfully accepting. “This is a guy I can trust for the rest of my life. I really want us to be husband and wife.”
Charlotte Dujardin and Dean Goulding do too. Dujardin, who won gold for Britain in the team dressage equestrian event on Monday, was cheered on by her partner Goulding from the stands. After clinching the title, she spotted Goulding holding up a sign: “Can we get married now?”
The pair have been actually engaged for eight years but are yet to walk down the aisle. That will soon be fixed.
“He has made it so public that now I am certainly going to do it,” Dujardin said.
So are another pair of Brits, cyclists Jason Kenny and Laura Trott, who are finding that an Olympic themed-romance can be good for your career.
Kenny and Trott got together at the London 2012 Games, a village romance that blossomed quickly. After both won two golds they went to watch beach volleyball, got amorous in the stands, but had the misfortune to have been seated behind former soccer star David Beckham. Cameras and Becks go together like Michael Phelps and water so the cyclists were quickly emblazoned upon the front of the UK tabloids, at which point another young gentleman stepped forward to say he was dating Trott. He seems to have fallen off the radar…and the cyclists are now engaged. What chance did the other poor guy have? Kenny now has five career golds and is a national hero in his homeland.
The wedding will be some time after the Olympics. “We already see each other as a team,” Trott said.
For others, marriage can be used as a potential reward for success.
Carmen Marton and Safwan Khalil are Australian taekwondo competitors who are married under Islamic law and say they will have a larger wedding – provided they both get medals in Rio.
Indeed, an uneven medal haul between athletes in a relationship could perhaps be a bit awkward, or so it initially seemed when talking to Aliaksandra Herasimenia of Belarus. Her boyfriend, swimmer Yauhen Tsurkin, proposed at the start of the Games.
“I had a great Olympics and he did not swim so good,” said Herasimenia, who got bronze in the 50-meter freestyle. Tsurkin placed 30th and 35th in his two events.
“But I love him anyway,” she added quickly. “Even if he could not swim at all.”
Ah, there it is, that romance in the air, or in the wind, or whatever. Whether it is just Rio or the magic of the Olympics, it is here, and it’s real.
