Dutch Ice Skater Ireen Wüst Wants to Talk about Her Job, Not about Her Girlfriend

By Chantal on Sunday, February 14, 2010 - 22:47

Imagine you are an athlete and on your way to the Olympic Winter Games.

Now add press relations to that equation and imagine yourself being hounded with questions, not about your sport or how you are preparing yourself for the Games, but about yourself and your significant other because you once casually mentioned that you’ve had a girlfriend for a while now.

Such is the case for Dutch long track all-round speed skater Ireen Wüst. In a Dutch magazine, published in October 2009, the skater casually mentioned she had been in a relationship with her girlfriend since May of that year. That girlfriend turned out to be short track speed skater Sanne van Kerkhof.

Since then, Wüst had to dodge questions about the relationship, which seemed to concern the reporters more than her role in the Winter Olympics.

Photo credit: ireenwust.nl

“I want to talk about ice skating”, Wüst said in a recent interview. “You are not asking Sven Kramer (Dutch, European and World All-round Champion, Ed.) about how his relationship is going. So why would you ask me? If I would’ve had a relationship with a guy, you wouldn’t have asked me either.”

In preparation for her first competition day today, Wüst is trying to ignore the subject completely. While the article in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant says that either her coming out or the so called ‘Olympic Nerves’ got to her, I believe it is a mixture of everything that is going on.

Yes, Wüst came out in the interview, but I don’t think she regrets doing so, I believe she regrets the amount of attention that fact got instead of her high chances of winning medals opposite other favorites from the Czech Republic, Germany and Canada. I simply think she hadn’t anticipated how much attention that little detail would get, especially since she mentioned it so casually. Perhaps she didn’t think that much about the consequences of disclosing this information.

Sanne van Kerkhof (left) and Ireen Wüst (right)

Then again, why should we have to think about the consequences when all someone does is mention you’re in a loving relationship with your partner? The only difference here is that this partner is of the same sex.