Rowing star takes break from chemo to land her gold medal

‘All being well, I’ll be back next spring’

ANYONE who goes through chemotherapy is tough. But Erin Kennedy takes it to another level.

the inspirational rowing cox led her boat to gold while in the middle of a course of treatment for breast cancer.

Mrs Kennedy, 30, claimed first place alongside her Great Britain crew at the European para-rowing championships in Munich yesterday.

She only received a diagnosis of breast cancer three months ago – since when she has undergone two rounds of chemotherapy – but has vowed that ‘cancer won’t define me or my career’.

‘today’s been really emotional for me,’ said a tearful Mrs Kennedy. ‘I’m really holding it together. I’m just really proud of the team. It’s a lot for me to take but it’s also a lot for them. they’ve picked me up every time.’

She joked: ‘My oncologist is just totally on board with this so don’t worry. I’m not sort of running away from her and hiding it from her.’

Mrs Kennedy coxed her crew – Frankie allen, Giedre Rakauskaite, Ed Fuller and ollie Stanhope – to victory in the PR3 mixed coxed four final. they finished the 2,000m course in seven minutes 6.73 seconds, 19.33 seconds clear of France.

Mrs Kennedy, who was awarded an MBE earlier this year for services to rowing, will now take some time off from her sport to continue treatment.

But she has every intention of being back to compete in the 2024 Paris olympics. ‘If there’s anything motivating me to get better it’s to come back and take this crew to Paris’, she told the BBc. Mrs Kennedy, who has previously won a Paralympic gold as well as world titles, explained: ‘I’ve had two rounds of chemotherapy so far.

‘I’m getting off my flight on tuesday into an oncology appointment and have bloods taken to have chemotherapy on the thursday. So that will be my round three. and then at the end of the month I’ll have round four.

‘From that moment it will be every other week and then after that I’ll have weekly treatment for 12 weeks. It’s a sabbatical, it’s not a stop. and, all being well, I’ll be back for racing next spring and I’ll fight anyone who says I won’t.’ Mrs Kennedy has won acclaim for using her profile to urge women to check their breasts and has been frank about the physical impacts of chemotherapy.

In remarks to olympics.com, she discussed the shock of receiving the diagnosis earlier this year and the realisation that she would have to undergo gruelling treatment.

But she added: ‘Genuinely, I was like, “What about rowing because it’s a fundamental part of my life?” It’s not something that I would ever want to just walk away from. I wasn’t just going to basically go home and sit and wallow.’

EILISH McCOLGAN is running on fumes but she will drag every drop of fuel out of her tank. The European Athletics Championships begin today in Munich with the Dundonian still riding the wave from her sensational medal double at the Commonwealth Games and the prestige of carrying Scotland’s flag at its close.

But there is the chance of a glorious double this evening in the 10,000metres final. A match of the audacious assault from a fortnight ago would surely give the 31-year-old a golden shot. Physically and emotionally, she admits, it will be all or nothing as she dares the fatigue factor to kick in.

‘It’s still going to be difficult going to Europeans because I have had a disruptive build-up with doing the 10,000 and the 5,000 in Birmingham, with the excitement and the lack of sleep,’ she said. ‘It’s a lot to manage but it gives me a lot of confidence. The Europeans is maybe not quite as strong as Commonwealths. So it gives me a lot of confidence to know that there’s a medal up for grabs.’ Potentially an upgrade too on the silver she nabbed behind Dutch dynamo Sifan Hassan at the previous Europeans in Berlin in 2018. ‘I’d love to go one better than I did in Berlin,’ she said.

‘Again, we’re back in Germany. But to come away with a gold would be the ultimate goal and the perfect end for my track season.’ It is not quite the full-strength British team that went to the World championships in Eugene last month with several big names resisting the temptation of a treble.

Others, like Nicole Yeargin, are on a medal hat-trick — with Yeargin starting her 400m bid this evening. For those in this morning’s marathon, it was always going to be one from three this summer, with Scotland’s Luke Caldwell seizing the opportunity of his road debut for GB&NI on the streets of Munich. His gig on the side as Scotland’s possible successor to Professor Brian Cox through his research into time and space at a university in Colorado will have to wait for now.

‘I’m an experimentalist,’ he explained. ‘My experiments involve using lasers and electric fields to track molecules and do experiments on them, hopefully to tell us some new things about the universe.’ Hampden in 2014 was out of this world, Caldwell admits, when he finished 13th in the 5,000m amid a double shot at Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games.

‘An incredible experience,’ he said. But the 31-year-old wants more days in the sun and his astonishing time of 2:11:33 on his marathon debut in Houston last January has restored his ambitions on the international stage. ‘I feel like I’m progressing,’ he said.