Gabriela Szabo, salutes her 3000m victory at the 1999 World Indoor Championships (© Getty Images)
Gabriela Szabo, the reigning world champion in the women's 5000 metres, said Thursday she will marry her coach at the end of the week.
Szabo said she was happy to make public her long-rumoured romance with 37-year-old Gyongyossy.
"I can tell everybody that I'll mary Zsolt in Bucharest later this week," Szabo told a news conference.
Szabo, 23, first met Gyongyossy 10 years ago when he discovered her in a cross-country race. This year she became the first woman in track and field to earn more than 1 million dollars in a season in prize money.
The wedding will take place on Saturday in one of the late Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's villas on the shore of the Snagov Lake, 35 kilometres north of Bucharest, Szabo said.
The villa borders on a medieval monastery housing the tomb of Vlad the Impaler, the 16th-century warrior who inspired Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
Szabo, 23, ended her athletics season with victory in the IAAF Overall Grand Prix, in Munich on 11 September, just days after clinching a half share in the IAAF Golden League million dollar jackpot, which she split with Denmark’s Wilson Kipketer.
Szabo's total earnings this year are estimated at around 2 million dollars.
