Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Golder’s News And Sport 

This world-champion powerlifter who gave up trying to look more feminine after being let down in her relationships says she is now ready to find love again and to start a family.

Anna Turaeva said she had always wanted a successful sporting career and originally started out doing martial arts before moving on to bodybuilding. She became a world champion at the WPC World Powerlifting Congress in 2012 in the raw bench press category.

But she also wanted to settle down with a partner and start a family, but said that as a teenager she was always disappointed with her relationships, and at the age of 16 she gave up trying to find a man in her life.

Instead she put all of her energy into becoming a professional athlete, cutting her hair short and giving up any attempt to wear traditional women’s clothing such as long skirts, preferring trousers instead. She said: “I felt that dresses and high heels looked strange on my muscular body.”

After becoming a champion she moved into coaching, and said that she had planned earlier to find somebody to settle down with but kept returning to coaching. But now that she is 41, she is hoping to find a man so she can have a family.

She said she recognised that many people felt she had masculine characteristics because she had put on so much muscle during the years as a professional athlete, but is not worried about this putting off a potential partner.

Local media such as steer.ru also reported that she had spent years taking steroids which had affected her appearance making her seem more masculine.

But in an interview published on Russian site Zen.Yandex.ru and in other local media, she admitted that she still hoping to meet a man, get married and have more than one child. She is also hoping that her partner will share her interests in reading, writing stories and poetry, and hiking.

In the meantime, she has a good female friend named Viktoria she often posts online with, and does not care about the fact that people often think they are a couple because she is masculine looking.

She is not however giving up on her coaching where she focuses on women and children, and is also planning to set another record in bench pressing for which she is training hard.

Turaeva was named European champion in the raw bench press in 2014 at the under-82.5-kilogramme category after pushing 180 kilogrammes (397 lbs) and is a multiple Eurasian raw bench press champion.

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