Catriona Gray's boyfriend isn't worried about maintaining a long-distance relationship

Miss Universe Catriona Gray’s Filipino-German boyfriend Clint Bondad is taking all this new attention in stride.

“Everybody’s messaging me, ‘Hey Clint, it’s fine. You can do this.’ And I’m like, relax guys. I really love her to be Miss Universe but people are over-sensationalizing the whole thing,” Clint tells GMA News Online on Thursday morning. “People think I’m completely shunned but it’s not the case. You have to understand there are other nations involved so security is very important.”

He admits he hasn’t seen the newly crowned Miss Universe, “but we message constantly. It’s not a problem.”

Clint adds, “We’ve been doing this long distance thing since before so it’s nothing new. The only new part is the whole Miss Universe part. The public part is new.”

On News To Go Thursday, Clint shared they’ve been going out for six years, which all started in a Baguio elevator. “She didn’t respond to me at all. I was trying to be suave. I was expecting her to say hello but she just took my hand and squeezed it so hard. ‘Hi, I’m Catriona Gray' was all she said," Clint narrated.

 

 

 

 

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The face you make when the cutest nose in the universe presses against your face ???????????? ??????

A post shared by Clint Bondad (@clintbondad) on

Dec 1, 2018 at 4:07am PST

He shared Catriona put her whole Miss Universe stint together herself. “Of course she had a team behind her, but she was leading them [and] I played zero role in that.”

According to Clint, the new Miss Universe is “like a snowball, a really, really big one” and her win was like “the perfect storm.”

“She finished Miss World in the Top 5 and the moment grew from there,” he said, adding Catriona is “very self-driven. She has the ability to sit down and organize things by herself.”

To GMA News Online, Clint said Catriona “rolls into the world and becomes more and more comfortable. She does the things to make it comfortable for her. Of course there were moments of [vulnerability] but she did it very well. She practiced more, I mean you saw her walk.”

Clint says she would practice on him, his role being to film her practices on camera. “I would have to film it but after that, she would train with her coaches.”

As Catriona’s boyfriend, Clint was privy to her fantastic initiatives in her bid to become Miss Universe – her videos, her costume, that twirl. 

But he made it very clear that he tried to stay out of it "because I didn’t want anything I do to potentially be good or bad in that sense. I wanted her to be everything. I didn’t want a hand in her victory.”

“I’m very strict on our personal and professional lives. I don’t want the private and the business life to mix,” he adds.

Catriona’s title comes with more attention and more admirers, but Clint isn’t worried. “It just confirms that I have good taste,” he laughs.

And when asked if he was ready to share her with the greater public now that she belongs to the universe, the wise boyfriend answered: “She belongs to herself first.”

What a handsome and intelligent pair, indeed. — LA, GMA News