Valentines day: Romantic tale of 'two wives' who are competing at Winter Olympics 2026 on February 14

Valentines day special at Winter Olympics 2026 as there will be competition between two spouses on February 14. Kim Meylemans of Belgium and Nicole Silveira of Brazil are both competing at the Winter Olympics in Italy in the sliding sport known as skeleton. The final races and medal ceremony are set for Saturday.

The couple's heated rivalry includes a lot of love. Though each competes for her own country, they have also created their own unit: Team BB. They share a chef, a sprinting coach, a physiotherapist and exercise equipment. They train together, travel together and watch videos of each other racing, offering tips. They are bunking together at the Olympic athletes' village in Cortina d'Ampezzo, in northern Italy.

29-year-old Meylemans and 31-year-old Silveira said that competing against each other hasn't been a problem because skeleton is an individual sport. They are not hockey players facing off on the ice or boxers trading punches in a ring. In a video interview before the Games began, they laughed as they discussed their unusual sport -- and unusual relationship.




Meylemans made her Olympic debut in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and both women competed in the 2022 Beijing Games. Both are in good form coming into these Games: Meylemans won the World Cup title in January, and Silveira placed ninth.

If this is their final Olympics, as both expect, they are going out in style. Silveira carried the flag for Brazil in the opening ceremony in Cortina, wearing an avant-garde puffy white cape. The couple is getting ready to settle down in the house they own in Calgary and start a family.


Kim Meylemans-Nicole Silveira Relationship, Marriage


They met in 2019 on the skeleton World Cup circuit, a series of competitions held in the winter, mostly in Europe. During the COVID-19 pandemic, hotel rooms were in short supply, so they shared accommodations. Love soon followed.

They were engaged in 2024 during a trip to Brazil, and even that was a competition. Silveira popped the question and Meylemans said, "No!" -- because she was carrying a ring in her pocket and had planned to do the proposing.

They were married last year, in Calgary, Alberta, where they wore matching white pantsuits, and pride flags served as table decor.

The couple are ambassadors for Pride House in Milan, an Olympic venue meant to serve as a safe, inclusive place for LGBTQ+ athletes and fans as Italy's government rolls back rights for gay people under the country's far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

Meylemans and Silveira came to skeleton very differently.

Kim Meylemans

Meylemans was born in Germany to Belgian parents. She struggled with asthma as a child and attended a boarding school in the mountains of southern Germany that specialized in treating children with the affliction. She loved sports, particularly soccer, but playing in the mountains meant chasing balls rolling downhill more often than kicking them, she said with a laugh.

There was a sliding track nearby, and she had always thought skeleton looked "kind of bad-ass." At age 13, she gave it a try.

Nicole Silveira

Around the same time, halfway around the world, Silveira's family moved from Brazil to Canada. At 23, she was living in Calgary and training to be a nurse while bodybuilding in her free time. A team of Brazilian bobsledders living in Canada recruited her as a brakewoman -- the person who pushes the sled at the start of the race and brakes at the end, but otherwise is along for the ride.

"I'm a bit of a control freak, so I did not enjoy jumping in a sled, just sitting there and praying we wouldn't crash," she said.

Instead, she tried skeleton, which uses the same track. She found it terrifying at first, but she at least controlled her own fate. She, too, grew to love it.