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Coming back from cancer, Brazil rugby sevens star Raquel Kochhann ready to tackle her third Olympics

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Coming back from cancer, Brazil rugby sevens star Raquel Kochhann ready to tackle her third Olympics
She heard her No. 10 being called, tapped hands with a teammate who was leaving the field, and ran into position for Brazil, a smile on her face.
She made a quick sign of the cross, rubbed her hands, and held them up with fingers splayed to receive the ball. And then Raquel Kochhann nodded: Play on.
That also seems to be her life motto. A deep desire to chase her dreams has seen Kochhann overcome breast cancer, surgery, and months of follow-up treatment to return to the highest level of rugby sevens and have a shot at her third Olympics.
After more than 1½ years on the sidelines, initially with an injured knee and then for her cancer recovery, Kochhann reappeared for Brazil in January at the world sevens series event in Perth. She helped Brazil reach the quarterfinals in Los Angeles, played in Hong Kong, and in the series finale in Madrid.
Now she’s preparing for the Paris Olympics, where women’s sevens kicks off July 28.
The most difficult person to convince she’d be ready in time for Paris was her doctor “because of the complexity of the case,” Kochhann says.
“He always supported me, but he was apprehensive and careful,” the 31-year-old Brazilian tells The Associated Press. “To this day, his heart is in his mouth whenever I take some kind of hit.”
Heavy hits are a regular occurrence in the condensed, fast-paced version of rugby known as sevens (because of the number of players on each team).
Upper-body collisions are frequent when players are either carrying the ball or tackling, which can make doctors nervous.
Not Kochhann. She believes she’s done the work in the gym and in her recovery to prepare her body for anything the sport can throw at her. She also received medical clearance from the team.
In a social media post in late 2023 announcing her return to play, Kochhann urged followers to “play every game like it’s your last.”
“This phrase sounds cliché, but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, what if we don’t have another opportunity?” she posted. “Our fate is unpredictable. An ACL injury in May 2022 turned out to be a lengthy breast cancer treatment. A lot of learning and personal growth.”
Rugby roots
A dedicated soccer player as a young athlete with ambitions of wearing the famous Brazil jersey, Kochhann first tried rugby at the age of 19. She was instantly converted.
She debuted for Brazil in 2014, won a bronze medal at the Pan American Games the following year, and was there in 2016 in the host team when rugby sevens made its Olympic debut at Rio de Janeiro.
Her mother couldn’t attend the Olympic matches because she was dealing with breast cancer herself, but Kochhann reveled in the support from her sister and thousands of new fans. The Tokyo Olympics were an altogether different experience as spectators were banned because of COVID-19 restrictions.
But she was determined and good enough to earn another Olympic experience, even when, while rehabbing her knee injury, she underwent scans for a lump in her breast and discovered it was malignant.
“Cancer wasn’t a shock, given my family’s medical history and genetics — and it could have happened at any moment in my life,” Kochhann said in a matter-of-fact interview for the AP. “I went through a preventive bilateral mastectomy and moved to the oncology department. I had to stop my career and went through chemotherapy to prevent the further spread of cancer.”
All the while, health experts were telling her to stay physically active.
“Even if the therapy would bring me down physically,” she says, “I kept believing I could beat this ... and I did.”
Whatever transpires between now and late July, Kochhann wants her inspiring comeback to be a message “that everything in life always has a good side and a bad side.”
“Our recovery and how we live life will depend on which side we choose to look at. I could be sad, upset about the injury and then the cancer, but that would use a lot of energy, and I chose to focus that energy on recovery. Always seeing an opportunity in every difficulty.”
One of a kind
The easiest person to convince she could return to rugby was Brazil coach Will Broderick “who, like me, was eager to be able to train me and see me back on the field,” Kochhann says.
Broderick, who has been coaching the Brazil women’s sevens team since just before the Tokyo Olympics, felt like he barely had the right to assess Kochhann’s comeback.
“Because it’s just so far above what you could imagine a human being able to do,” Broderick says in a telephone interview with the AP. “We witnessed it firsthand — she trained hard through chemotherapy, through radiotherapy. She was at the training center every day.
“If she wasn’t training, she was at the training sessions, helping with the filming and coaching. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Broderick always thought his playmaker would return but acknowledged there’s always the lingering doubt.
“There’s so many things that could go wrong but she is probably one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met,” he says. “To be honest, it’s phenomenal. Incredible. Then she comes back to train and how can I tell her … she needs to push harder, work. Who am I to say that?”
But Kochhann was willing to push harder. The tradeoff was Kochhann becoming an inspirational presence for other players.
“She’s matured all the way through and she doesn’t let the little things bother her too much anymore, like refereeing decisions or little errors,” Broderick says. “She’s grown in that sense and how she handles the little setbacks because I guess that her perspective is completely different.”
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games
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NEXT: Graduation, lack of opportunity force most gymnasts to quit. A women’s league is out to change that

Graduation, Lack of Opportunity Force Most Gymnasts to Quit. A Women’s League is Out to Change That Luisa Blanco knows her gymnastics career has an expiration date. The funny thing is, the older the recent Alabama graduate gets, the more it seems to keep getting pushed back. For a long time, the 22-year-old Blanco figured her final season with the Crimson Tide this spring would be it. Then she qualified to compete for Colombia in the Paris Olympics at last year’s Pan Am Games, a dream she had long ago abandoned. And while Blanco — a Texas native whose family is from Colombia — is focusing her attention on getting prepared for the Games, she is not sure she wants to see this chapter of her life end with the closing ceremony. “Part of me wants to do gymnastics forever,” Blanco said. “It’s something that is not easy to walk away from.” She’s hardly alone. Every year dozens of collegiate or elite athletes reach a crossroads where opportunities to continue vanish. They graduate. Or they get hurt. Or burned out. Or some combination of the three. Starting next year, however, there could be an alternative. The new league wants to provide women a chance to continue competing until they’re ready to walk away on their terms. Co-founders Aimee Boorman, Maura Fox, and LaPrise Williams believe the spike in popularity of women’s sports in general — from the WNBA to soccer to tennis — and gymnastics in particular in recent years have created a landscape where a professional league will work. The league plans to host its initial event sometime in 2025 with a roster of post-collegiate, international, and perhaps elite gymnasts who aren’t ready to essentially be forced into retirement by circumstance. “Female gymnasts are ending their career in college and most of them are at the peak shape in their life,” said Boorman, who helped guide superstar Simone Biles to five Olympic medals and three world all-around championships. “Mentally they’re in the right place. Physically they’re in the right place. Then they have to deal with this sense of loss and this mourning process. We are providing the platform that allows them to continue.” A ‘Necessity’ for New Opportunities There was once a belief in the U.S. that female gymnasts needed to be in their teens if they wanted to compete at the highest levels of the sport, a myth Blanco grew up with while training at the Dallas-area gym owned by Valeri Liukin, whose daughter Nastia won the Olympic title at Beijing in 2008 at 18. “That mentality of your body peaking at 15, 16 years old so that you can get ready and go to the Olympics, that was very much ingrained in me from a very, very young age,” she said. That’s no longer the case in 2024. There’s a strong likelihood that the five-woman U.S. Olympic team for Paris will be comprised almost entirely of athletes in their 20s, led by the 27-year-old Biles. “With the average age of Olympic gymnasts continuing to climb, we are seeing that there is a necessity for an additional environment that supports and celebrates the phenomenal athletes in our sport outside of the traditional arenas of national and college competition,” said Cal women’s co-head coach Liz Crandall-Howell, who along with her husband Justin led the Bears to a program-best NCAA runner-up finish this spring. The shift is due to several factors, including the easing of NCAA compensation rules that allow elite gymnasts like 2020 Olympic champion Sunisa Lee to compete collegiately while cashing in on their success. Gymnasts like LSU’s Olivia Dunne have landed high-profile sponsorship deals that have helped raise the profile of the sport to something beyond the every-four-year fascination with the Olympics. Going Pro in the US The new league wants to provide an outlet for gymnasts both athletically and financially, believing the league will let the athletes remain in the sport longer, letting them grow their personal brand in the process. The gymnastics will be a hybrid of sorts. The league will use the 10.0 scoring system — figuring it’s more accessible to casual fans than the more complex international scoring system — and is looking for a middle ground between the NCAA and elite levels. There will be a slight lean toward artistry over difficulty, though there should still be plenty of opportunities for athletes still looking to push their skills. It just won’t necessarily be required to impress the judges. “The code (of points) is geared to make sure these women have longevity in the sport,” Boorman said. “We want to see the big exciting gymnastics but we also aren’t going to push skills that have high injury rates that could shorten their careers.” In a perfect world, Boorman sees a day where the league has a handful of events in the late-spring/early summer, multiple training centers, paid maternity leave, and “everything else a professional athlete should have because it’s a job, not just a hobby.” That, of course, will take a significant amount of investment and hopefully a broadcast partner for starters. Boorman points to the rising TV ratings and streaming numbers for pretty much anything women’s sports-related at the moment as evidence the market is there. The meets — in whatever way they reach the audience — won’t look like a typical broadcast. The league plans to lean into AI and tech to give viewers specific metrics on everything from the speed of a gymnast sprinting down the vault runway to the height they reach during a tumbling pass. “This event is not going to be a show, it is going to be a competition,” Boorman said. “We really want to honor the athletes and their physical prowess. They are the best in the world at what they do.” And just as importantly, allow them to stay in something they clearly love. Blanco watched teammates at Alabama graduate and struggle with having gymnastics become something they “did,” not something they “do.” The new league could potentially change that. “Starting something like this is incredible,” Blanco said. “Because it gives you the opportunity to not leave something unfinished for as long as your body can let you.” ___ This story was updated to delete an image of the wrong gymnast. ___ AP Summer Olympics:

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