Brittain’s victory after fighting two battles
NOW that Lawrence Brittain and Shaun Keeling are back on South African soil, they can’t help carrying their Olympic medals with them everywhere they go.
“I don’t see it as my medal – I did it for South Africa and it is South Africa’s medal,” said Brittain.
“Most of the time I have it with me, because people want to see it and hold it, which is special. Maybe one day I will hang it up – but for now I will share it with everyone.”
The victorious coxless pair, who earned silver in their event, are enjoying a much-needed rest after a gruelling few months of hard work on the water.
It was especially tough for Brittain who, only 18 months before the Rio Games, was completing chemotherapy treatments after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014.
“Rowing took a back seat for a long time – there wasn’t space for two dreams,” Brittain said, referring to winning a medal at the Olympics and beating cancer.
“It was tough coming to terms with the cancer and the treatment. That first week I was just in shock. One week I was in the boat, training, the next I was starting chemo, it was that quick. I didn’t feel any different, but now I had cancer.”
The 25-year-old lived with the disease for two years and had six threeweek cycles of chemotherapy.
After his final chemotherapy session, the former Parktown Boys’ High School pupil wasted little time in getting back into the boat to try to get his dream of competing at an Olympic Games back on track.
“The Olympics were a million miles away from where I was, but I have never had small dreams.
“When I was sick for two years without knowing it, I was training so hard. I kept putting more and more in and getting nothing back.
“The chemotherapy is bad for your body and there were lots of possible compli- cations… When I was sick is where I learnt to train properly.”
Eighteen months down the line, Brittain and Keeling were standing on the podium in Rio de Janeiro, waiting to collect their Olympic silver medal.
The rowing pair finished in a time of 7:02.51 – 2.80 seconds behind New Zealand pair Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, who stopped the clock at 6:59.71.
Brittain and Keeling have been rowing partners and friends since 2008.
Keeling said: “We have been good mates for a long time and are very like-minded in wanting to achieve an Olympic medal.
“Add to this that we have an easy camaraderie, where we have some humour training and often have jabs at each other. Without this the training would be hard to complete – you need a lot of humour when banging out big weeks of training.”
In their race, with 500m to go, the pair were seen pushing themselves harder and motivating each other. What were they saying to each other?
Keeling said: “We had a brutal race in Lucerne, Switzerland, where we… lost out of a medal by .2 of a second. “From that day on we fought for more.
“When Lawrence called ‘.2’ in the (Olympic) race, there was absolutely no way the Italians and British were going to come back at us.”