The twinkling shine of the Olympics came in a different form for Llewellyn Herbert who got engaged to Pretoria model Letitia Roets at the home of Greek ambassador Jannie Momberg at a private and intimate party in Athens on Thursday night.
”Now I’m relaxed, smiling and happy,” said Herbert after placing a diamond ring on the finger of Roets, the tall beauty with whom he has had a roller coaster relationship in the long build-up to his attempt at equaling or improving on his bronze 400m hurdles medal in Sydney 2000.
Herbert was devastated when the couple broke up over the phone just before his pre-Olympic 400m hurdles race in Zurich two Fridays ago. He finished 8th in 49,11seconds behind Olympic gold medal favourite Felix Sanchez.
Roets is the mother of Herbert’s toddler son Keanu-Llewellyn.
”I was feeling terrible before and during the race,” Herbert wrote in a SMS message after the Zurich race.
The Pretoria athlete arrived at the Olympic village struggling with heartbreak, then he announced that he was ”confident, calm and happy” after reconciling with his Pretoria girlfriend.
”We’ve sorted our problems out,” he said then. ”We are going to get engaged to be married, and I can think of no better place than Athens, the mother-city of the Olympics.”
His coach Nico van Heerden had ”a heart to heart” talk with the 27-year-old livewire. The Olympics is the last place where an athlete with a heavy heart could excel. Now that he’s engaged to be married, he is planning a romantic holiday on a Greek island after the Olympics. But first, the hurdler needs a medal. – Sapa