[imagesource:wikimediacommons]

Charlene Wittstock, a former Olympic swimmer who grew up in Benoni, married the Prince of Monaco in a gorgeous wedding in 2011.

But before her royal romance, she was intertwined with a South African rugby player who is said to have really broken her heart.

Charlene’s impressive swimming career put her in touch with athletes from around the world, which is how she was put on the radar of her future husband Prince Albert.

But before him, Charlene is rumoured to have dated a handful of handsome athletes, including rugby player Andre Snyman, per The List.

Born in South Africa, too, Snyman made his professional debut on the rugby field in 1994 with the Blue Bulls and would go on to play the sport professionally for over 10 years. The pro rugby player participated in a total of 38 test matches for the Springboks before hanging up his boots in 2007.

Image: SA Rugby

In 2011, he hopped over to the US where he became the head coach for the Glendale Raptors, a rugby union team based in Colorado.

While Snyman was rushing the ball into the try zone in the early 2000s, Charlene Wittstock was busy making a name for herself in the competitive swimming world, which is when their paths crossed.

It is now known when they started dating exactly but they were spotted together as early as 2002, just two years after Charlene met Prince Albert. The couple had posed for a photo together while attending the wedding party of Snyman’s Springbok teammate Joost van der Westhuizen and looked rather happy together.

Then came heartache. French news outlet Voici reports that the couple broke things off in 2003, with those close to the pair having claimed that Snyman was the one to dump Charlene for whatever reason.

A close friend of Charlene’s told Voici that the breakup took the swimming sensation by surprise. “She thought [their breakup] was a temporary crisis and that they would pick up the pieces, but that was not the case,” the source stated.

Anyway, Snyman has a whole other life now:

Andre Snyman with a selfie stick….my life is complete. pic.twitter.com/h9XIRNKhum

— Not Peter de Villiers (@Coachdivvy) November 27, 2016

To make matters worse, around the time of the breakup, the swimmer suffered a shoulder injury that would prevent her from participating in future competitions, and in 2007, she was forced to retire from competitive swimming altogether, per the Olympics’ official website. In an interview with Tatler, Charlene admitted that retiring was one of the most difficult decisions she’s ever had to make.

Then, she and Prince Albert would have their very first public outing together in 2006, before becoming a royal and crying at her own wedding in 2011.

[source:thelist]