Winter Olympics 'Most Eligible' Bachelorette Goes On Date With Fan After 2000 DM Requests

A Winter Olympics star who described herself as 'the most eligible bachelorette' has revealed she dated a fan on Valentine's Day.

Sophia Kirkby, 24, represented Team USA in the women's doubles luge event on Tuesday.

She placed in fifth alongside team-mate Chevonne Forgan, with the pair finishing a second away from the bronze medal position over two runs of the course.

She was also a part of the team mixed relay event on Wednesday, where Team USA again finished fifth.

They were in a medal position ahead of the fourth and final run, but a slow time meant that they were overtaken by Italy and Latvia.

Kirkby, a three-time World Championship medallist, has now completed her Olympic schedule in Milano-Cortina, but USA are one of the few nations to allow their athletes to stay in the Olympic Village for the entirety of the Games.

As a result, the 24-year-old spent part of Valentine's Day with a fan who had sent her a direct message on Instagram two weeks earlier.

Before the Olympics got underway, Kirkby took to her official Instagram account to declare that she would be 'single' during the Games, adding: "Athlete Village's Most Eligible Bachelorette season has officially begun."

She then posted a promotional video, via Xfinity, encouraging her followers to slide into her DMs on either her Instagram or her dating profiles.

"This is your opportunity to go on a date with an Olympian," she said.

"I will have my dating platforms up and running. We can grab a cappucino, or maybe an Aperol Spritz."

She said ideal applicants would be 5ft 3in tall, adding: "He would have to be so nice and he would have to be strong enough to sweep me off my feet."

She also revealed that volunteers had been helping her to 'matchmake' while in Cortina.

By Valentine's Day, Kirkby secured herself a date with two different men, telling her Instagram followers that she had 'two interviews, two dates' ahead of her before the day was over.

She later posted a picture of what appeared to be a man in green shorts to her Instagram page.

In a separate photo, she revealed that one of her dates had taken her to a 'Michellin-star' dinner in Cortina, before adding that she also went on a 'spa date'.

But perhaps most surprisingly, one person flew over 600 miles from the UK to Milan to meet Kirkby, who also runs a pin trading business that is linked to her Instagram account.

"He said, 'Hey, I just found out I have the 13th to 16th off. Would it be weird if I came and booked an Airbnb five minutes from you?'," Kirkby told The New York Post.

"And I was like, 'Go ahead'. He's actually from the United States. He's just currently living in the UK. And he flew here just to see me."

"I would estimate by now, I have over 2,000 message requests," she continued.

"The thing that I loved was people that just gave me a full description of their name, height, age, occupation.

"It's a little disappointing [on Tinder], I'm not going to lie. In my bio, I even said, 'I'm Sophia. I'm an Olympian. Please give me your best pickup line'. Maybe two per cent of them are pickup lines."