Four and a half years
“Dream couple”: DFB star once loved Olympic champion
03/26/2025 – 10:12 a.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Lea Schüller had tacitly separated after four and a half years of relationship. The sporting careers should be in the foreground.
It was a painful decision for Lea Schüller: The German national football player and striker of FC Bayern separated after four and a half years of relationship from the Austrian sailor Lara Vadlau. The background of the separation remained unclear for a long time. Because Schüller and Vadlau decided in November 2023 to go separate paths.
The relationship was increasingly burdened by the challenges of their everyday work, Vadlau said in August of last year in the podcast “Breakfast with me” of the Austrian radio: “We may have seen each other two or three days a month.” Schüller was often traveling when she came home herself.
Vadlau had decided to return to professional sports as a sailor: “When I said I wanted to sail again, she supported me well.” The rapid change ultimately led to the end of the relationship. “She said she suffers so much that we never see each other. Whenever I pack my suitcases, or for her like a separation.”
Schüller said that she couldn’t do it anymore “and don’t want to stand in my way,” said Vadlau. Therefore, the striker pulled a line and decided that it was better to separate. So both can focus on their sporty careers.
The two met in Munich in 2019, a year before Schüller switched from SGS Essen to FC Bayern and Vadlau went to the university as a medical student there. At times they lived together and opened their relationship openly on social media. In the separation, on the other hand, both were silent for months.
Vadlau emphasized that the decision that the separation was not publicly made had been made together in order to maintain the sporting focus and not to distract from headlines through their private life. In retrospect, however, she regretted the end of the relationship. It is “incredibly a shame because we were the dream couple par excellence in many eyes,” said the 30-year-old.
Despite the separation, they and Schüller are still well friends. They were able to support themselves only to a limited extent at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, but both Schüller and Vadlau were successful. The national striker won bronze with Germany, the Austrian even the gold triumph with the sporty partner Lukas Mähr in the 470-mixed boat class.
Vadlau left open whether reconciliation could occur in the future: “Never say never, but at the moment we have developed in different directions” – and that was a good thing.