Our #TriLoveStory

by Chelsea White on 14 Feb, 2018 03:31 • Español
Our #TriLoveStory

All great love stories have one thing in common… triathlon. Well, at least for these 12 couples that’s true! 

We asked YOU, the triathlon community, to submit your #TriLoveStory and we have chosen our favourites from all over the world to share in honour of the most loving day of the year - Valentine’s Day! Roses may be red and violets may be blue, but these swimmers, bikers and runners found love through triathlon and YOU COULD TOO!

Elites Rachel Klamer (NED) and Richard Murray (RSA)

 

Carolina and Andres from Colombia

“Hello this is Carolina from Bogota, Colombia in South America and my Husband Andres is the love of my life! Andres and I love doing sports and we have been practicing and racing triathlons for the past two years. When we met he used to ride his bike, while I was a runner, but now we love doing everything together.”

Annie from Sweden and Jeff from the United States

This is me and my boyfriend Jeff Yingling. The picture was taken only the second time we ever met. We met when I was at a training camp in Boulder, Colorado getting ready for the ITU Long Distance World Champs in Oklahoma and I needed some help with my bike before the race. Jeff is a pro mechanic and was just the perfect person to help me! He also happens to be the best person in so many ways. We still live with 8000km and a 8-hour time difference apart, but we make it work!”

Vivian and Vince from Canada

“We are Team V - Vince and Vivian from Vancouver, here for Valentine’s Day! We met and started dating during our undergrad at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). I first joined the McGill Triathlon Club with a friend to stay in shape during the snowy winter months. He laughed at me when I told him I joined - yet, somehow, he did his first triathlon before I did one. Fast forward four years, and we’ve done several triathlons together, including two Ironmans and we both competed at the ITU Multisport World Championships in Penticton last summer. Triathlon has brought us together even more than our love of desserts and given us quality time together - Saturday’s are about century rides and chocolate croissant breaks. We can’t wait for the future to travel to destination triathlons. Currently, racing schedules are on hold for a year while we wait to find out where he’ll be for neurosurgery residency and I start my career as a speech-language pathologist.”

Anna from Spain and Marcel from Australia

“It was a sunny day in July 2013 in Palamós (Spain), the beach village I spend my holidays in. They were setting up something at the shore, with fences, lots of tents and a blue carpet. Back then I had no idea what triathlon was so I went to investigate. An ITU World Cup race was taking place so I stayed to watch the women’s race. I loved it so I decided to stay for the men’s race too and that’s when I noticed Marcel; tall, handsome and chuckling around the start line with everyone else. After that day, we started talking on social media and soon we were chatting every day. He went back to Australia and I stayed in Spain but we felt close to each other despite being a world apart. And this is when the magic of triathlon comes in again. By some sort of extraordinary chance, his squad chose Girona, my hometown, as their summer training base and I couldn’t be happier. As you can imagine, the rest is history ;) When summer came I could finally meet him and the rest of his training partners and coach, who are really good friends now. I spent all my winter training so that I could do some sessions with him (or at least not die while trying). I’ve re-learned how to swim and ride and he’s learned Spanish. We’ve gone together to some of his European races and I’m a proud cheerleader/wheel carrier/number-tattoo placer. Four years after we are still going strong and triathlon brings Marcel back to this side of the world every summer. This sport has brought me so much: an amazing partner, a bunch of great friends, motivation to stay active and healthy and lots unnecessary knowledge about wetsuits and bike frames!”

Beatriz and Daniel from Brazil

“When our story began, Daniel was an Olympic backstroke swimmer and was in his senior year as a professional athlete and me, fighting for a place in the Olympics. We started dating and he fell in love with me and triathlon! He stopped his career as a swimmer in 2016 and became a triathlete! Our love for the sport grows every year just like our history! Today I fight for a place in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and he accompanies me to the races and even competes in some too!”

Diana and Fabricio from Ecuador

“Our love story is quite interesting. I started practicing triathlon about three years ago and while I was biking one day I met him. I was not good at all at cycling and he was part of a military team (so he was really good at it). It seems that I caught his attention so he started helping me with the cycling and would always wait for me. Now we are planning to compete in our first half Ironman together. He is actually my official coach. We love to spend the weekends training and it is really good to have someone who actually understands that you have to wake up everyday at 4am or train. We really enjoy this TriLife and hope to do it for our whole life.”

Llayda and Oktay from Turkey

“It all started when a guy who I didn’t really know in our training group sat behind me on the bus while we were going to a national race; we got to know each other at that event. As the time passed by we got closer and closer. We support each other in every training session and every competition. After two years of friendship, both of us have realized we had feelings for each other. Things went pretty quickly after that point and now we are in our third year of our relationship. Every day, every session and every competition is becoming more and more enjoyable together for us. I wish everyone a valentine’s day filled with happiness, triathlon and love.”

Minerva and Fabian from Mexico

“We are Fabian and Minerva from México and we have been together for seven years. Fabian is an elite athlete and I am a high performance 70.3 athlete. It’s is funny how our story developed because we went to the same Kindergarten, elementary school, middle school and high school, but never were in the same class. It wasn’t until I joined the triathlon team that I realized he was also part of it. We started to talk more and we were a couple few months later. Since then we have been on the same team being training partners and travel partners. His dream is to go to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and I want to win my age group in the 70.3 World Championship. Each of us has a very high standard goal and we love to support and accompany in our journey toward our dreams. We love to talk about our day or trainings even if we have heard it 1000 times, it’s awesome to scream and cheer for each other, we love to see the success from the other one and we are there in the disappointments, bad or even trying days.”

Stephanie and Frederick from the Phillipines

“We met way back in college and we pretty much just hanged out as friends. We eventually lost contact and got busy with our careers. After a few years, he started doing triathlon while I was just starting to love the sport. Didn’t know he was checking me out on Instagram and suddenly out of the blue, he sent me a direct message. And the rest was history. We have shared memories over 10 triathlon events with Olympic and 70.3 distances, respectively. We dated for two years and got engaged just last December. I couldn’t be more happy to be marrying someone who not only inspires me to do my best in my passion for triathlon but also succeed in life.”

Silvia and Riccardo from Italy

“I do triathlon with my boyfriend Riccardo. We met seven years ago in a swimming pool and then we started to do triathlon together. We loved it from the first race! We work, but our common hobby is triathlon. We travel a lot for competitions and we love it. Unfortunately in July of 2017 I had an incident on bike as I was invested by car with a hit and run and I was admitted to the hospital for four months and had two interventions on my back. However, now I am better and am hoping to return to training soon and eventually return to races!”

Rachel and John from the United States

“My fiancé and I met on our university triathlon team back in 2014. He was a freshman and I was a junior; neither of us were interested in the other at first. However, once a core group of us became really close friends (probably because we were the most consistent people at practice) we started getting to know each other a little better. We started dating at the end of 2015, and just got engaged last September! To date, our university’s club triathlon has been the source of one marriage and two pending marriages occurring this year. Gotta love co-ed triathlon teams!”

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