Head First and Lying Down, Two Sledding Wives To Compete Against Each Other In The Winter Olympics
Nicole Silveira and Kim Meylemans will represent two different countries in the single-person skeleton event at the Winter Olympic Games in February.
Featured Images: via Instagram
Need another dose of heat and rivalry to help get you through this wintry mix? Meet these real-life wives who do their thing lying face down, head first, and shooting down a frozen track at about 80 m.p.h. Kim Meylemans and Nicole Silveira will be taking each other on with small, thin sleds, in the “skeleton” event at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in February. And they couldn’t be happier to pull on their skin-tight speed suits and sprint to it.
This won’t be the first time this power couple will be competing against each other. Meylemans (representing Belgium), and Silveira (sliding for Brazil), met at the 2019 World Cup and have had numerous occasions to up each other on the curves. They kept their love life in low profile mode until 2021, when they went official with a pic under the mistletoe on IG. One year later, they were competing against the clock, and each other, at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Earlier this month, Kim Meylemans took European Championship gold, and set a track record with her World Cup victory in the picturesque Alpine town of St. Moritz, Switzerland; she also secured six podium finishes out of seven races during the season. Nicole Silveira, born in tropical country with limited access to snow, became the first from Brazil to win an International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation (IBSF) World Cup medal (2024–25 season); during her Olympic debut at Beijing 2022, she also secured Brazil’s best result in a Winter Olympic Games in sliding sports.
While competing against each other, Meylemans explained in a 2022 interview with Today, that as they are from countries with limited skeleton skating athletes, they tend to rely on each other for support.
“We’re pretty much the only athletes for our countries,” she said. “So we tend to reach out to people for added support because we don’t have that huge team that other countries have. And so I think we’re also able to help each other in that sense.”
The duo announced their engagement in 2024, following a proposal on a romantic boat trip in Brazil. According to official Olympics reporting, Kim Meylemans actually said, “Noooooooo” – but only because she had also planned to propose on that trip, with a ring in the pocket to prove it. Thankfully, all’s well that ends well and the happy sliders celebrated their engagement with a party in 2024. They tied the knot in January 2025.
Related: A Real-Life ‘Heated Rivalry’ Is Headed To The Olympics
“Surrounded by our family, we said yes to forever and we couldn’t be happier to call each other wives,” Kim Meylemans shared with fans on IG. “… We really love heading into this huge season and possibly last olympic games, as spouses and by that a whole new level of commitment to each other – no matter what curve balls this year and the challenges ahead will throw at us, our love comes first.”
