A hit right on target. Bjorndalen and Domracheva’s personal firing line

Valentine’s Day this year falls on the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. It is there that one of the most famous couples in the world of sports – biathletes Ule-Einar Bjorndalen and Daria Domracheva– will celebrate Valentine’s Day. In honor of the holiday, we decided to tell you how this “sports” love story was born.

How it all began

Some say that Domracheva met her future Norwegian husband at the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010, others suggest that they started to communicate closely in 2012 at the summer training camp in Austria. However, we know only one exact date – October 4, 2012, when Bjorndalen broke up with Italian biathlete Natalie Santer. Apparently, then the biathlete had already felt sympathy for his Belarusian colleague.

A veil of secrecy

In the next few years biathletes carefully concealed their relationship, the most discussed at that time was Daria’s phrase: “The official information about my personal life will be only the message about my marriage”. Soon it almost turned out that way! Of course, many friends and fellow biathletes knew about their relationship, but the strength of friendship was stronger than the desire to tell the public about the private life of Domracheva and Bjorndalen.

The first to poke holes was French biathlete Martin Fourcade, who said in 2015, “I’m on good terms with Domracheva, but understandably not as close as Bjorndalen.”

Official confirmation

On April 5, 2016, at Bjorndalen’s press conference, at which, as journalists expected, it was supposed to talk about the biathlete’s sporting career, the main statement was not only the confirmation of his relationship with Daria, but also the fact that the Belarusian biathlete was pregnant: “I have a great relationship with Daria Domracheva. Now we are a couple and are waiting for the birth of a child. We didn’t want to keep it a secret, but we’ll focus on our relationship. It’s very exciting to become a father.”

On July 16 of the same year, the couple wed in Oslo. The ceremony was held modestly, in the circle of family and friends. The only public photo of the celebration is in Daria’s Instagram.

Not only biathletes, but also parents

On October 1, 2016, the couple had a daughter Xenia.

Naturally, at first Daria and Ole Einar devoted all their time to their daughter, but already in 2017 they returned to training. At the Olympics – 2018 Daria worthily represents the homeland, and Bjorndalen helps athletes in training.

But despite the career, the child remains the most important link in the lives of both biathletes. “I need to learn Norwegian, as it is my daughter’s second mother tongue,” Daria admitted in an interview. “Who is the head of our family? Xenia, of course. She laughs a lot. I think she will make a great comedian,” Bjorndalen claims.