A 36, after four Olympic Games, many athletes would retire from world-class competition. Add breast cancer, three children, and a pandemic to the equation, and some may think high-jumper Chaunte Lowe faces an impossible challenge: After competing in four Olympics, she’s chasing her fifth. Now that the pandemic has pushed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to 2021, Lowe remains positive:
Read MoreGrowing up with her grandmother in California, Lowe took comfort in Riverside Faith Temple where her uncle was the pastor. "I didn't walk anywhere," she recalls. "I jumped." Her talent for the high-jump earned her a scholarship at Georgia Tech.
She competed in Athens in 2004 during her sophomore year; and won bronze in Beijing in 2008. Between the London and Rio games, she gave birth to her third child, a son.
Track and field careers are typically short three or four years. Lowe ignores the statistics and just keeps jumping.
“You’re Too Young For Breast Cancer”
She first felt the small lump in 2018. After a mammogram, her doctor told they lump was an inflamed lymp node — she was too young for breast cancer, too fit. Months later, the lump felt bigger. She saw a different doctor.
A second mammogram showed the lump had grown. By June 2019, a biopsy had revealed Lowe had an aggressive form of breast cancer.
About 11,000 women 40 and under are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the U.S. says Dr. Ann Partridge, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
"My first thought was, 'I'm going to leave my kids without a mother,'" she recalled. "My second thought was, 'There's no way I'm leaving my kids without a mother.'"
Running Through Chemo
After a double mastectomy, she "attacked chemo," her husband, Mario, said. Lowe went through six treatments, one every three weeks. Exhausted and nauseated, she began sharing her cancer journey on social media to inspire others.
"There were some days all she could was rest," her husband told SI. "Other days, she'd push along a walker. But then she would have days where she could go out and run.”
“I Started Wearing A Mask Immediately”
By January, Lowe was looking forward to the U.S. Olympic Trials. But by March, the pandemic changed everything. "I started wearing a mask immediately," Lowe said. "It became increasingly evident that going to local gyms [and] public tracks was not something I could do."
With help from her sponsors, she put a jumping pit in her backyard and converted the family garage into a weight room. But the pressure to train while overcoming cancer and home-schooling her children has eased. "God stopped the whole world so we can have this time together," she told her children, now ages 6, 9, and 12.
By 2021, Chante Lowe will be a 37, a breast cancer survivor, mother of three, — and she just may be an Olympian again, too.
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