Every October 19, World Breast Cancer Day is celebrated, a date established with the aim of raising awareness among the population about the importance of early detection of this disease and supporting people who suffer from it. This disease affects millions of women around the world and sport, unfortunately, is no stranger to it. Great elite athletes have had to fight the toughest battle of their lives and many of them managed to add victory to their record against this tough disease that they faced with determination and courage.
The stories of athletes as important as the tennis player Martina Navratilova, the Spanish basketball player Laura Grande, Chaunte Lowe -high jump specialist-, former triathlete Karen Newman, cyclist Jen Hanks or snowboard pioneer Kimmy Fasani They have become a source of courage and determination.
But, If there is a truly inspiring story, it is that of Novlene Williams-Mills, who competed with the secret of a fatal diagnosis and managed to get on the podium in London 2012. Novlene Williams-Mills decided to transform her fear into her greatest motivation. He came in fifth place in the 400 meters, while together with his team he managed to win bronze in the 400 meters relay. However, few knew that behind that metal hid a personal tragedy that only her husband and her doctor knew about.
A big secret under the Olympic spotlight
In 2012, her teammates were ready to run together now in the London Olympics, but something else was also on Novlene’s mind: the breast cancer she had been diagnosed with. With his doctor’s permission, he postponed any surgical intervention until after the competition, because he wanted to run in case it were the last time. Novlene was 30 years old and had to undergo a double mastectomy, in total she needed four operations to remove the tumor that had also moved to her chest.
The bronze was won but the road was not easy. “It was very hard to be in London at the Games, when the rest of the world didn’t know about it. From the moment I had to step on the track, I knew that everyone was going to look for that medal. I? I was counting the exact days until my surgery. It was like a weight on my back that I couldn’t lift, no matter how hard I tried to get those thoughts out of my head for this couple of races. It was something that kept weighing on me every time I stood at the starting line,” he confessed in an interview for ESPN Magazine.
“I stayed in the shower a little longer so I could cry”
I couldn’t stop thinking about it: in the hotel, on the way to the stadium, warming up, in the call room, in those few hundred steps to the starting line, always the same idea. Cancer. “The worst thing was being in the Olympic Village, surrounded by teammates and trying to avoid them seeing you cry. I was the captain of the Jamaican team. I didn’t want people to ask me what was going on. So I would stay under the shower a little longer crying, sobbing, because I thought, “Well, okay, I’ll let off steam. I’ll let off all the emotions.”he added.
As soon as he won the medal, he took a direct flight to Atlanta and Three days after the Olympics, I was undergoing my first surgery. In November 2012 she underwent her third operation, after which the fourth would arrive in January 2013 to reconstruct her breasts.
But after months of fighting, he won the battle he fought face to face with cancer and Not only did she beat him but she came out stronger, something that translated into new sporting successes.
In the 2015 World Athletics Championships, in the final of the 4×400 relay, Novlene would be in charge of closing and After a comeback in the last meters he would win the gold medal with his team. His first gold in 12 years of experience. A year later a silver medal would come in Rio to add 4 Olympic metals.
Currently, at 43 years old, Novlene is a retired athlete, mother of twins – thanks to fertility treatment – but above all, a woman who never gave up the baton in the face of cancer.
Since then, she has tried to raise awareness among other women and her message could not be more forceful: “No one can tell you how to fight your own battle. All I can say is that when you’re about to give up, you have to try a little harder. It’s not going to be easy. Very hard days will come. But giving up is easy. Fighting is more difficult every day. I have to be the survivor of my own battle. “I have to be a cancer survivor.”
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