Raquel Kochhann is 1.67 meters tall, but has the strength of a giant. She is an emblem of the Brazilian rugby sevens team, recently overcome cancer and will be one of the country’s flag bearers at the opening of Paris 2024 next Friday.
Aged 31 and born in the southern state of Santa Catarina, her first major contact with sport was in indoor soccer, and she joined the Juventude team. However, at 19 she began to play rugby sevens and quickly stood out until she was called up to the Brazilian national team in the category.
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With the national team, she won the gold medal at the 2014 and 2018 South American Games and the bronze at the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto. She was part of the squad that competed in the 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games, making her the first player in this discipline to participate in three of these international competitions in France.
An important milestone in her career, not only for her sporting performance but also for her personal history. In 2022, she began treatment for breast cancer and another for her sternum, in addition to undergoing surgery for a ligament injury in her knee.
A luta contra o câncer colocou tudo em perspectiva. O que importa pra ela? Estar com os que ama e fazer o que é apaixonada. É uma honra ter você carregando nossa bandeira, Raquel 🥹🇧🇷#JogosOlímpicos #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/JeSoapaJXJ
— Time Brasil (@timebrasil) July 23, 2024
“The doctor told me that I should stay physically active, even if I couldn’t play, as it could help my recovery. Even though the therapy weakened me physically, I continued to believe that I could overcome it… and I did,” Kochhann said recently in an interview reproduced by World Rugby, the body that brings together the federations of this sport.
“It wasn’t easy to walk away from what I loved,” he explained, adding: “So what I did was turn it all into a victory. If I could do five reps of the chest press, I celebrated. If the doctor told me to only do 10 presses, I did them as best as I could.”
All that work of perseverance and self-improvement paid off: after a 19-month break in her career, the athlete returned to play for Brazil in January of this year in the sevens tournament in Perth, Australia. At the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, she will be one of the flag bearers alongside Isaquias Queiroz, an athlete who competes in canoeing in the flatwater category.
“My team is amazing and has always helped me a lot with my mental health. They were always joking and helping me in training and I gave back as much as I could, even though I couldn’t train. This group helped me through the process and this is how I faced the treatment: step by step to get back on the pitch,” Kochhann told the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB).
