Skip to content
Skip to content
News
The article is more than 11 years old
Tuuli Petäjä

Olympic medallist trades windsurfer for maternity gear

Tuuli Petäjä-Sirén, Finland’s silver medallist at last year’s London Olympics and winner of the 2012 Athlete of the Year award, has announced that she’ll be trading in her windsurfing board for baby gear for the next year or so.

Tuuli Petäjä-Sirén
Windsurfer Tuuli Petäjä-Sirén will switch training regimes as she prepares for the birth of her first child. Image: Ville Sirén

Finnish windsurfer Tuuli Petäjä-Sirén announced that she would be skipping the sport’s upcoming European Championship competition. Petäjä-Sirén expects to deliver her firstborn at the end of the year.

Petäjä-Sirén took the silver in the women’s RS-X class windsurfing event in the 2012 Olympics in London. The medalled windsurfer placed fourth in a world championship competition in Brazil in March.

The Finnish sportswoman married her long-time partner, Ville Sirén, last September.

Last year’s Athlete of the Year award marked the fifth consecutive year that the judging panel granted the recognition to a female athlete.

Petäjä-Sirén was a controversial choice among members of the public however, as she beat out Paralympic athlete Leo-Pekka Tähti, who had a record Finnish haul of four gold medals in the 2012 London Paralympics.