- Star won two gold medals at the Paris Olympics
- Some shocking news puts his career in perspective
Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus has opened up about a cancer scare that changed the way she thinks about her body and left her convinced that what she does in the pool is “irrelevant” compared to being a mother.
Titmus’s achievements have placed her among the elite of Australian swimmers in Olympic history.
She is the first woman in almost a century to successfully defend the 400m freestyle title, and the first Australian woman to win consecutive Olympic titles in any swimming event since Dawn Fraser, who claimed the 100m freestyle at three Olympic Games. consecutively from 1956 to 1964.
Gold medals in the 200m and 400m freestyle events, including “the race of the century” against American Katie Ledecky on the opening night of the competition in Paris, have established her as one of the all-time Olympic greats. .
However, the 24-year-old nearly missed the Paris Games after scans revealed two benign tumors on her ovary during a scan for an injury.
The prospect of infertility reminded Titmus that having a family was much more important to her than a swimming career and changed her relationship with her body.
“It put a lot of things into perspective for me. My body is not just a vehicle to train, the purpose of my body, actually, is to carry a child one day,” she said in Inherited.
“And that really hit me, made me realize how much I want to be a mother, and made swimming seem almost irrelevant at the time.
Ariarne Titmus (pictured) says her health scare reminded her that one day raising a family is much more important to her than her swimming career.
Titmus underwent surgery to remove tumors from an ovary ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics after an MRI revealed a growth.
But it also made me think, ‘You know what? I have a privileged position heading into these Games, I have a great opportunity here to defend my titles and return home with gold medals. Bad things can happen in life all the time and leave you stumped, so make the most of this opportunity.”
“I think after that operation I went crazy.”
Titmus now has a different outlook on life and says his future family is much more important than the Olympic gold medals he won.
“I always wanted to be a mother, but (the health scare) probably made me realize how much I want it,” she said.
The swimming champion says her body’s purpose is to have a child one day
Titmus says he would trade all his Olympic gold medals to have a child
“I would give up all the gold medals I have won to have a child.
“I just have those maternal instincts, and I think the fear of that becoming more difficult with the prospect of losing the ovary was really hard.
“I’m so lucky to have the best mother in the world and I just want to be that one day.”