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Inside Report: Olympics
Ludmila Engquist refused to let chemotherapy for breast cancer prevent her from competing, and at a the world championships, she proved her point
Engquist (center) never lost her spirit or her blonde hair. |
Last March, Engquist found a lump in her right breast. The confirmation that the lump was cancerous was delivered on almost the same day that Engquist's 63-year-old mother-in-law, Maud, died of cancer; her father-in-law, Lars, had died of the disease three years earlier. "When the doctors spoke the word to me -- cancer -- it was like they were saying, 'You are dead,'" says Engquist. On April 21, her 35th birthday, she underwent a single mastectomy and less than a month later began a series of six chemotherapy sessions, the last of which was completed in September. She is a cancer patient with an Olympic medal and an Olympic dream, and if that were the end of the story, it would be touching enough. Yet there is much more.
Engquist not only survived cancer (although doctors won't call her cured until she is free of the disease for five years), she challenged it, refusing to allow it to interrupt her athletic career. "She was finished as an athlete for about a week, before she began considering how she could continue," says her husband, Johan (who lives in Stockholm with Engquist and her 17-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, Natasha Narozhilenko).
Engquist made minor concessions to cancer, cutting back from 11 training sessions each week to seven, but she refused antinausea medication. In July, after four chemo sessions, she returned to competition and won a Grand Prix race on July 30 in Stockholm. Her victory in a semifinal heat of the world championships on Aug. 27 in Seville was one of the most poignant moments of the competition. After flashing across the finish line in 12.50 seconds, her fastest time since 1997, Engquist pointed defiantly at the trackside clock, then dissolved into sobs. "There were so many feelings at once," she said later. "I was happy and proud, then the tears came. They surprised me." One night later she ran even faster, 12.47, better than her '96 gold medal time of 12.58, in finishing third behind Gail Devers of the U.S. and Glory Alozie of Nigeria.
The day after the final, she sat poolside at her Seville hotel, eyes vaguely hollow but her blonde hair intact (thanks to an "ice cap" worn during chemotherapy to prevent the usual hair loss). Although she had won a bronze medal, she repeated what she had said before the worlds: "This is still not Engquist you see. I am not the way I was before my illness."
She is right. The Engquist who won in Atlanta was a self-absorbed athlete. Now she is an example and an inspiration, the first woman athlete to return to form after being stricken by breast cancer and perhaps the first athlete of either sex to compete at an elite level while undergoing chemotherapy. "So many women have contacted me, by letters and by E-mail," she says. "In the first week after I went public, two 35-year-old women told me they did self-examinations that week and found lumps. They were so thankful."
She hopes that her decision to train during chemotherapy will send a message to others with breast cancer. "I want to tell women, 'Go to the gym, exercise. Your life is not finished, and it will help you fight this illness.' It helped me so much to have goals."
She has another: to win a second gold. Much work lies ahead. Still not Engquist, she says. She is, in fact, someone stronger, someone better.
-- Tim Layden
The voices followed Vanessa Atler into Kansas City's Municipal Auditorium in September and dissolved into a trail of giggles. "Ohmygosh, it's Vanessa!" "Vanessa, sign my poster!" Though Atler, 17, had yet to compete in an Olympics and was still a month away from her debut at a world championship, her picture was on a lot of posters and her name was on a lot of minds. And why not? Her gymnastics performances are a unique blend of polish and propulsion, and she has a grin that seems to end on the back of her neck. She also just may be the world's best vaulter and is a threat to win a medal on the beam and floor in Sydney. And did we mention Atler has had her own Web site since 1996 and did a TV commercial for Reese's peanut butter cups?
Comparisons to Mary Lou Retton are inevitable but premature. Atler didn't have to compete in Kansas City because she had a sore ankle, which flared up again at the worlds in October, hampering her performance. She had already secured her spot on the U.S. team for the worlds with her performance at nationals in August; there she placed second after a fall from the uneven bars dropped her behind eventual champion Kristin Maloney.
Atler will post further updates on her Web site (www.atler.com), where visitors can hear the Olympic theme song, count down the time until the Summer Games -- only 25 million seconds to go! -- and take part in whatever contest she dreams up. Two years ago, browsers sent in videos of themselves for Atler's saltine-eating challenge (contestants had to eat seven saltines within a minute). In her diary entries Atler gives liberal praise to her competitors, points out times when she is overscored by judges or overhyped by TV commentators and urges other gymnasts to eat properly. After having a subpar meet in '97, Atler posted the entry, "Top 10 Reasons Why Vanessa's Meet Didn't Suck." Among them: She got home earlier because nobody wanted her autograph, and she didn't get a sore neck from wearing medals.
Not everything in Atler's life has been so lighthearted. In '98 she was waiting her turn behind China's Sang Lan on the vault runway when Sang suffered a paralyzing injury at the Goodwill Games. Atler went on to win gold on the vault -- then sold one of her outfits for $1,000 and donated the money to Sang's medical fund. Long before the Olympics, Atler has already exhibited the spirit of goodwill.
-- Brian Cazeneuve
For three weeks Nancy Darwitz scoured every corner of wind-whipped Minneapolis and its suburbs, braving a blizzard of sales clerks in sporting goods stores, in search of the perfect Christmas present for her daughter Natalie. It was late 1997, two months before the U.S. women's hockey team would emerge as the golden girls of Nagano, but Nancy knew what she wanted -- a Team USA jersey -- and she didn't stop until she found it. "Natalie seemed to love it," says Nancy.
Eight months later Natalie was invited to the USA Hockey Festival in Lake Placid, N.Y., to compete against those same Olympians, and her mom suggested she bring the still-unworn jersey for the players to sign. When they got to Lake Placid, Natalie at first said she had forgotten it, then at last confessed. "She said, 'Mom, I don't want a store-bought jersey,'" says Nancy. Suddenly, it was clear: Natalie wanted to earn a jersey.
It didn't take long. In December 1998, Natalie, then 15, became the youngest player to be chosen for the national team. Last March she scored her first two international goals at the world championships, in Finland. "If she keeps progressing the way she is," says Cammi Granato, the U.S. captain, "she's going to be a dominant player very soon."
A 5'2" center with an explosive stride and an innate ability to see play developing on the ice, Darwitz is already a star in hockey-mad Minnesota, where as a seventh-grader she received permission to play on Eagan High's varsity -- and scored 90 goals. Says U.S. coach Ben Smith, "She has the capability of leaving a pretty big imprint on this sport."
Darwitz knows the best place to do that: Salt Lake City, site of the 2002 Winter Games. "The Olympics are in my head," she says. "I dream about them at night.
-- Richard Deitsch
Inside Olympics archive
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