Dual world champion swimmer James Magnussen has tied the knot with long-time partner Rose McEvoy.
The loved up couple said I do in front of family and loved ones on Friday in a ceremony that took place in Sydney’s Watson Bay.
Weather wasn’t kind on the ceremony with the heavens opening up and pouring rain, but the wet conditions didn’t hamper the day.
An image posted to social media by the Enhanced Games showed Magnussen and McEvoy standing hand-in-hand on the altar as they faced their guests with beaming smiles on their faces.
The ceremony came after the Olympic medallist got down on one knee and popped the question to McEvoy in Croatia in 2024.
The pair have been together for around a decade, having met through friends as Magnussen continued to put his stamp on the world stage as one of the elite swimmers.
Magnussen officially hung up the goggles from competitive swimming in 2019, but he returned to the pool last year with the Enhanced Games.
The 34-year-old, who had been retired for six years, became the face of the controversial competition which sees athletes take a concoction of testosterone and peptides, among other substances banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), to try and shatter world records.
The inaugural Enhanced Games are set to take place in mid-May this year in Las Vegas where Magnussen will be hoping to shatter the 50m world record and collect a $1m payday.
Despite “juicing to the gills”, Magnussen was forced to watch on as rival swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev – aided by undisclosed substances and a polyurethane suit not approved for Olympic use – broke the world record at an Enhanced Games competition pool in North Carolina in February last year.
Gkolomeev touched the wall with a time of 20.89 to eclipse the world record time of 20.91 set by Cesar Cielo in 2009.
The feat saw Gkolomeev pocket an eye-watering US$1m prize packet which was dangled by Enhanced Games organisers.
Despite being pipped to the post, Magnussen is adamant he has what it takes to go faster and win the Enhanced Games.
While Gkolomeev won’t officially enter the record books, his time matters even less now after fellow Aussie swimmer Cameron McEvoy broke the world record last week.
Racing at the China Open, McEvoy completed the one-lap dash in a time of 20.88sec and won by a body length ahead of USA’s Jack Alexy (21.57) and Aussie Kyle Chalmers (22.01).
McEvoy later spoke out about the fact that he came away from his swim $1.4 million worse off than if he were doping.
“I’m dumbfounded in terms of the stark contrast that exists in the landscape of world swimming,’’ McEvoy told Code Sports in Brisbane.
“It’s crazy to think that to get a world record without a suit and without any form of performance-enhancing drugs, the bonus is zero dollars. Where if I put a suit on I could easily drop half a second then there’s the performance-enhancing drugs side of things which I am sure is an improvement.’’
