Sanya Richards-Ross wearily opens the door to her physiotherapist's office in Zurich. An enormous diamond-studded wedding ring illuminates her left hand, but her usually bright smile is faded. The 25-year-old world champion is suffering from a flare-up of Behcet's disease — a rare condition that causes ulcers and lesions of the skin — which has disturbed her career since it was first diagnosed in 2007.
"You know this is my worst bout with it going into this season,"the Jamaica-born athlete says. "I think it's going to become a little more noticeable this year so I'll probably be wearing sleeves and stuff. I don't know if you remember but a couple seasons ago I ran in sleeves — it wasn't a fashion statement it actually was to cover the lesions on my skin.
"You know with what I do I have to strip down, so I wear a lot of skin make-up to cover it. But it's a psychological distraction, an hour before the race, to have to go and do all that work."
Paradoxically the flare-up has coincided with perhaps the greatest 12 months of her life, in which she finally won a global individual title and, in February, married her college sweetheart, the New York Giants cornerback Aaron Ross. The two met at the University of Texas when Aaron noticed her at a track meet. "He went home and told his mom: 'That's the girl I want to date.'"They got together the following year and have been a couple ever since. But the stress of organising the wedding contributed to the flare-ups.
"Oh yeah, it was bad,"she says. "My husband and I had the best time, but it's so stressful having a wedding. I had a really bad flare before my wedding so I had to have full body make-up on the day. My veil also helped and I wore it all night so you wouldn't see as much. It was just annoying to have to go through that."
{{/usCountry}}"Oh yeah, it was bad,"she says. "My husband and I had the best time, but it's so stressful having a wedding. I had a really bad flare before my wedding so I had to have full body make-up on the day. My veil also helped and I wore it all night so you wouldn't see as much. It was just annoying to have to go through that."
{{/usCountry}}As an elite athlete known for doing 1,500 abdominal crunches per day, Richards-Ross should not have been a bride who needed to worry about her weight, but she prods her cheeks disparagingly. "You know my medication actually means that I retain weight."