It wasn't quite love at first sight for Saskia Budgett and Kyra Edwards.
The two rowers were fierce competitors during their junior careers before they became fast friends at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2015. And in a classic romantic trope, the rest is history.
As part of Bruce Mouat's Pride Month, the curler caught up with British Rowing's power couple to discuss their evolving love story, the importance of being visible members of the LGBTQIA+ community and the positives and negatives of doing the same sport.
Saskia: My dad rowed and then so did my older brother and sister at our local club. I just wanted to join in as the little sibling, and I started quite young at about 10 years old. I was inspired by my family.
Kyra: My story is very dissimilar, I think Saskia's story is quite unique really, never mind the fact her dad won the Olympics! I was just at school and did an indoor rowing competition and was quite good at it so joined a club from there.
Bruce: I actually did row for about three months at school and I was so small, they put me in at cox and I thought this wasn't for me! I didn't want that responsibility of steering the ship.
So was it through rowing that you both met?
Saskia: Yes, so we first met at junior nationals and raced against each other at about 16.
Kyra: Saskia won actually. And I remember training for the next championships and just thinking 'I need to beat Saskia!'.
Saskia: But Kyra was amazing on the rowing machine as a junior so I was always wanting to beat her on that. She was the one to beat.
Kyra: Then when we were 17 we did an international race in a four person boat and actually raced together. I lived in Nottingham and Saskia lived in London and we didn't really know each other we just came together for a weekend to race. It wasn't until we went to UCLA at the same time, that was where we really connected.
Saskia: We were best friends and did everything together and then it slowly became more and more. The rest is history really. There were so many conversations over such a long period of time wondering 'can we do this, should we do this, we're teammates', but ultimately our feelings are stronger than anything else you can control. And we've made it work within the team.
Kyra: We really considered that it might be a bad idea to date your teammate, but it didn't have any implications. You're very conscious of it not affecting anything. I feel like we loved being on a team together before we were together, so we carried that through, we just love rowing together and love rowing. We had that base of what it meant to be athletes without a relationship, and we built our relationship around that.
Saskia: And as teammates that's easy because we obviously want each other to go fast. The hardest thing is when we compete against each other to get into a boat, that's when we separate the two things out.
Bruce: That's a lovely story and it's obviously pretty unique that you've grown up competing against each other. I'm interested because from my point of view, training with my teammates every day, I then get to go back to my separate house which is a nice break. What's it like to go back to the same household?
Saskia: We usually have an hour where we will catch up and say everything, we want to say about rowing but after that we put a period on rowing and don't talk about it. A lot of our relationship we want to be focused on us and so we put a lot of effort into that as our whole life is rowing.
Kyra: We also make sure there's a space that we can discuss something, whether that's the gossip of the day. It's just getting that balance and we communicate a lot which is the key thing. We're currently in separate boats but two weeks ago we were in the same boat at European Championships, however I'm no longer in that boat.
Bruce: So as a couple within rowing and representing Great Britain on the international stage, what does it mean to you to be part of Team GB and part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Saskia: It's really important to be part of the conversation within Team GB because it's such a strong community of people to be a part of in the first place. We all have driven personalities and interesting stories but that next layer of being within the LGBTQIA+ community provides that extra support, knowing that other people have similar stories and understand where you come from.
Kyra: It's an interesting question. I didn't choose to me part of the LGBTQIA+ community but I am really proud to be, whereas Team GB is a choice that I made. Me being queer is just who I am and that makes me the best athlete I can be. It's important to me to use the Team GB space to show that being queer is okay and everyone can be. The two are separate in my brain but it's a good way of showing the world that some of the best athletes in the world are queer and you can be anything you want to be.
Bruce: Yes, I am lucky to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and Team GB is something that we strive and work hard for. I mean it's amazing.
Kyra: I have a question for you actually. I'm so intrigued to know how you found being a male in sport and coming out as I feel like that's a lot less prominent. About 25 per cent of the female athletes in our rowing team identify as not straight at the moment whereas it's zero per cent in the men's team and I don't for a second believe that everyone in the men's team is straight. I assume there are different barriers for the men, and I wanted to know whether you felt there were barriers in curling.
Bruce: I think it often comes down to each sport and the environment the sport is creating but for me, curling has always been an accepting space. I just always felt welcomed, and I was never worried about coming out. As a male in sport, I didn't have the fear of getting any bad press as I was quite comfortable in my own skin and quite happy to put myself out there. It gave me this sense of pride that I was potentially helping someone else down the line and if they ever needed to see a gay man doing well in sport this was my opportunity.
So, Saskia you went to Tokyo 2020 as a reserve and Kyra you missed out through injury, how did those two experiences push you to both want to strive for Paris 2024?
Kyra: I've always wanted to go to the Olympics since I was really little so missing out on Tokyo was shame, but it didn't stop the bigger picture and that aim.
Saskia: I have this fire in my belly that I want to be able to race at the Olympics so that's my drive now. This year is qualification year as well which is exciting. We're right at the beginning of our season now but our team has a lot of places to go. We've had a decent start, but we definitely feel like we have a lot more to give.
Sportsbeat 2023