Happily married: Cameron van der Burgh
After their festive wedding in Greece, swimmer Cameron van der Burgh and his wife, Nefeli, are settling down to married life in their Cape Town home
WE’RE used to seeing him on the starting blocks, barechested, goggles firmly in place, a stretch of water in front of him. But it’s a different Cameron van der Burgh who greets us at the door. This guy is chilled and full of smiles – and it’s easy to see why.
He’s in love and newly married. The SA Olympic gold medallist and the love of his life, Nefeli Valakelis, recently tied the knot in what they describe as their big fat Greek wedding.
Now they’re ensconced in their Cape Town love nest, a haven with the murmur of the Atlantic Ocean in the background. The couple (both 30) have just returned from their honeymoon and are clearly still on cloud nine as we chat in their three-bedroom pad in the upmarket seaside suburb of Bantry Bay.
They moved into the light-filled and spacious house last November. The peace and quiet of home stands in stark contrast to their wedding last month near Athens, Greece.
It was a Greek Orthodox ceremony and reception held on the Ktima48 estate overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
About 100 of the guests were South Africans – among them Cameron’s fellow Olympic swimming stars Ryk Neethling and Chad le Clos. Most of Nefeli’s family live in SA but the Valakelis family travel to Greece every year so the couple settled on that country for their big day.
And now that they’ve tied the knot he’s gained a big new family too.
Cameron’s mom, Beverley (61), is an only child and his dad, David (68), is the youngest in his family. Cameron and his brother, Andrew (32), didn’t grow up surrounded by throngs of cousins, uncles and aunts “so it’s nice to have a large family now – everything’s always a celebration and a joyous gathering,” he says.
Cameron, used to being in the spotlight, is an expert at keeping his nerves under control – but there were plenty of butterflies before the ceremony. “You can’t train for your wedding,” he says.
Dapper in a dark blue House of Crouse suit, he relaxed a little only when Nefeli joined him at the altar, gorgeous in a white Pronovias wedding gown.
“I, on the other hand, was super-calm,” Nefeli says. “The hardest part was keeping my dad calm!”
Nefeli is the only daughter of Nick (65) and Magda Valakelis (57), Greek expats who live in Pretoria. She has two older brothers, Paris (37) and Paul (34).
“Breathe, Dad, everything’s going to be all right,” she whispered to Nick as they walked down the aisle.
“That was the best moment for me,” Nefeli recalls. “To have my dad by my side and catch Cam’s eye at the same time and know, ‘I’ve found my person’.”
The reception was a raucous affair, the couple say. “At one stage there wasn’t an empty spot on the dance floor – everyone loved the traditional Greek dancing,” Cameron says.
After the wedding the newlyweds and 40 friends spent five days on the Greek island of Paros, after which Cameron and Nefeli headed to a luxury resort on Corfu for their honeymoon.
THEIR wedding was a long time in the making. Although both attended Crawford College in Pretoria, they only really became aware of each other after finishing school. They bumped into each other in a bar in 2009 and hit it off, but romance only blossomed when they met up again in Pretoria four years later.
On the way back from a social event they shared a cab and as they passed a nightclub they asked the driver to stop so they could “pop in for one dance and a drink”, Cameron recalls.
“We sokkied,” Nefeli says with a giggle.
And that was that. In December 2016 the smitten couple became engaged during a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps. “My plan had been to ski to her on bended knee then pop the question – but it turns out skiing is harder than I thought!” Cameron says, laughing.
So he had to come up with Plan B. He wanted it to be unusual and romantic but again things didn’t go quite according to the script. The couple were dining at a restaurant overlooking the Matterhorn when Cameron dropped the ring into Nefeli’s glühwein – where it promptly disappeared into the dark drink.
Cameron started fishing out pieces of fruit, saying, “I wonder what kind of fruit this is?” Nefeli thought he was being daft – until he picked out the ring and asked, “But what kind of fruit is this?”
SETTLING into married life might be his main priority now but that doesn’t mean Cameron has hung up his swimming trunks. The breaststroke maestro – who won gold in the 50m at the Commonwealth Games in Australia earlier this year and gold at the 2012 Olympic Games in London – still trains for an hour and a half every morning.
He follows a special training programme in the gym three days a week and does Crossfit three evenings a week.
When he’s not training he’s at his Cape Town-based consulting firm, Touch 58 – named for his world-record Olympic time – which focuses on sponsorships and marketing. He’s also completing his economics degree through Unisa.
Will we see him at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan? Maybe, he says – he’d love to chase gold in the 100m but “it depends how well my body cooperates”.
Nefeli, a qualified lawyer, works as an account manager at marketing company Ogilvy & Mather.
The couple, who love to entertain in their open-plan kitchen, lounge and patio, share their home with Fili and Mowgli, two Yorkshire terriers who get plenty of cuddles from Cameron and Nefeli.
So can we expect human babies any time soon? “We don’t have plans within the next year but we’re leaving it in God’s hands,” Nefeli says.
But they both share a dream of having a big family and a bunch of little GreekSouth African Van der Burghs would go down nicely.