Behind soccer star Megan Rapinoe stands her girlfriend, Sarah Walsh. Albeit, they stand far apart – an ocean to be exact, since they have a long-distance relationship.
"It's coming up on three years, and now she lives in Australia," the Redding, Calif. native, 27, tells Us Weekly. "She lived here for the first two years we were together."
The Seattle Sounders Women midfielder, who will play with the U.S. women's soccer team in the London Summer Olympics later this month, is pretty used to their arrangement by now. "Most people who are in a relationship on our team, it's basically long distance because we're gone so much," she says. "You have to have the right personality to go the distance we go and go the time we go. It's not for everyone."
But as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it's easier when a significant other is on the same page. And since Sarah, an Australian soccer player, is an athlete too, she understands. "She gets it," Rapinoe says. "She's great."
Rapinoe opened up publicly about her homosexuality during a July 2 interview with OUT magazine.
"For the record, I'm gay," she said. "I feel like sports in general are still homophobic, in the sense that not a lot of people are out…I feel everyone is really craving [for] people to come out. People want — they need — to see that there are people like me playing soccer for the good ol' U.S. of A."
Want more Olympics? Meet Team USA's families, go inside their homes (and gyms!), and more! Check out Us Weekly's Olympic collectors edition, "American Heroes," on newsstands now. Order at bn.com/usolympics.
