But Van Rouwendaal had to come from far. The seven-year-old Rio, named after the Brazilian city where she won Olympic gold, felt like her child. About three months before her race in Paris, he died after an operation of cardiac arrest, Van Rouwendaal looks back emotionally. “Then I drove to the Netherlands for the cremation. After that I didn’t train much for two weeks, but fortunately the kilos quickly came back. At first I will have lost mainly water, but then also muscle and fat.”
Van Rouwendaal wants to win a medal for deceased dog Rio
