MadameNoire
Source: Tanapat Prompa / EyeEm / Getty
Paralympic athlete Keula Nidreia Pereira Semedo didn’t get the gold medal but she got the diamond ring.
Semedo, a 32-year-old visually-impaired sprinter, recently competed in the women’s T11 200m race and finished in fourth place. On the other side of the finish line, her fiancé Manuel Antonio Vaz da Veiga, who is also her guide, dropped down on one knee and popped the question.
“I really have no words,” she said after her engagement according to CNN. “There are so many emotions all together. Just the fact of being here at the Paralympic Games, I hardly felt my legs actually because I was so nervous. Now, with the proposal, there are just too many emotions going on right now. I don’t have words to explain how I feel at this moment. I always had the dream of getting married but we hadn’t planned anything so far. We haven’t spoken about it and I wasn’t expecting it at all.”
There's love on the track in Tokyo ❤️
After a women's 200m T11 qualifying heat, guide Manuel Antonio Vaz da Veiga of Cape Verde proposed to the athlete that he partners, Keula Nidreia Pereira Semedo. #TokyoParalympics pic.twitter.com/RJYKMpO7k9
— #TokyoParalympics (@NBCOlympics) September 2, 2021
Visually-impaired sprinters have a guide to help them around the track and they are connected by a tether. It’s not clear how long he has been her guide but Vaz da Veiga and Semedo have been together for 11 years.
Vaz de Veiga said he decided to propose to her after “her name was put on the list to come to Tokyo in the end of July.”
