I had to fight anorexia to reach Brazil
RUGBY STAR’S STRUGGLE
HEATHER FISHER is reflecting on the various challenges she has overcome to be here, days from an Olympic Games with realistic aspirations of winning a gold medal with the women’s rugby sevens team.
Physically she is in supreme shape, free of the injuries that have plagued her and enjoying the Brazilian sunshine seeping through gaps in a canopy of palm trees at the Team GB preparation camp in the city of Belo Horizonte.
Mentally she is in a good place, too, but not afraid to admit there are times when she struggles to deal with her alopecia, a condition which has left her almost completely bald and with little body hair. An anorexia sufferer in childhood, she also has to remain vigilant with her diet to avoid slipping back into old habits.
‘As an athlete you try and control as much as you can,’ she says. ‘I’ve always had that stubbornness in me. I use it to my advantage now but when I was younger I didn’t know how to direct it. My parents were going through a bad divorce and my way to regain control was with my food.
‘I got myself into a vicious circle for about two or three years, but I met up with a nutritionist and he said to me, “You won’t be an athlete if you don’t eat”. I’ll never forget those words. I went home and I knew I had to eat if I wanted to achieve my dream of being in the Olympics. I still struggle with my food but I’m very much on it.’
Powerful and speedy enough to have represented the country in bobsleigh, Fisher is one of the most explosive players in the women’s game. She played badminton, cycled and rowed through school before taking up rugby at 15 and played while studying at the University of Wales in Cardiff. It was after returning from a three-year sabbatical competing as a bobsleigh brakeman that the 32-year-old developed alopecia.
‘In 2010 at the XVs World Cup, that’s when my hair started really falling out completely,’ she says. ‘I remember walking to a meeting room and I only had strands of hair left and my friends said, “You need to just shave it off completely”. I did, but couldn’t look in the mirror for six or seven weeks, I couldn’t comprehend my own reflection. I felt really ugly and to a certain extent still do, you just don’t feel attractive because as a woman you want to go out and do your hair. The struggle for me comes outside my rugby environment. People stare at my head and ask, “Have you got cancer? Are you getting better now?” I get called a man all the time. It’s always “Yes Sir” or “Can I help you, Sir?”
‘ I’ve started saying, “Actually, it’s Madam”. It’s taken me a long time to get to that stage.
‘I’ve been chased out of toilets in different countries with police waiting outside thinking I’m a guy in a girls’ toilet. They’re funny stories but I’m a human being and I’ve got this shape because of my sport.
‘My team-mates are so supportive and if ever I’m feeling like I need to cover up they reassure me.’
Fisher became an ambassador for Alopecia UK to help others. She says: ‘I thought if I struggle, other people are going to struggle so it was my way of saying it’s OK to be different, to look different, it doesn’t mean anything.’
There would be few finer ambassadors than Fisher. She has been through the mill on the field too, missing out on the final when England reached the World Cup final in 2010 through injury and again in 2014, when they won it. She is determined to be there all the way with the British team in Rio.
‘It feels so good to be where I am now, in such good shape,’ she says. ‘To win the whole thing would be the pinnacle, you can’t get better than gold at an Olympics. So many years have gone into making your body as robust as you can and we have to keep it together at six games in three days. It’s now or never.’