Image source, Getty Images
- author, Thom Browne
- role, BBC Sport Wales
Rosie Eccles says it feels “surreal” to have finally been selected for the Olympics after four bouts of COVID-19 affected her neurological system and put her boxing career in jeopardy.
The 27-year-old from Caldicot, South Wales, missed out on Tokyo 2020 after experiencing severe pain in his right arm and neck ahead of the London Olympic qualifiers.
It was later discovered that she had contracted COVID-19 in early 2020, which had affected the brachial plexus, a network of nerves in the shoulder.
Since then, the same thing has happened three times, and Eccles began to wonder if his Olympic dream would ever come true.
“It's been a long journey,” she told BBC Sport Wales.
“I always felt like I was running towards it and it was getting closer, but someone kept nudged it away.”
“When I look back at everything that's happened and think, 'I actually made it through that and am here now,' it doesn't seem real.”
“It gave me a different kind of passion.”
Eccles has had health problems to overcome since he was a teenager.
A few months after first lacing up boxing gloves at age 15, she was diagnosed with a heart condition that required surgery.
At 21, she was selected to represent Wales at her first Commonwealth Games but had to settle for silver in the welterweight division after losing to England's Sandy Ryan in the final.
She already had her sights set on a bigger goal: the Olympics. The boxer known as “Right Hand Rosie” entered 2020 ready to qualify for Tokyo.
But after contracting a “mysterious virus” at a training camp in the US, Eccles began to experience severe pain in his right arm, and within a few weeks he had lost 80% of the function in his right arm.
By the third day, the spread of the coronavirus forced the Games to be held without spectators, by the fourth day the Games were canceled, and within weeks the Olympics themselves were postponed.
Eccles went into lockdown like so many others. The pain of missing her first Olympic Games was compounded by pain in her right arm and neck. She began to worry that she would never be her old self again, let alone as a boxer.
“I gave up on my Olympic dreams,” she continued, “but I think the lowest point was when I had to deal with the situation during lockdown. I'd trained so hard for something and not only had I not achieved it, but now I have nowhere to train and I've got an injury that I don't know what it is.”
“I didn't know if this condition would ever go away, and it could potentially affect my daily life. At the time I thought, 'What is this teaching me? It's so unfair.' But it made me appreciate what boxing has given me, and that I'm not done yet, in a whole different way.”
“Coming back from there gave me a different kind of passion.”
Image source, Getty Images
Although she was eventually able to return to training, COVID-19 continued to impact sporting calendars and Eccles never got another chance to qualify for Tokyo.
In June 2021, on the day her selection for the Olympic team was confirmed, she posed for a photograph with 11 of her teammates at the GB Boxing gym.
Ms Eccles looked on enviously but admitted she cried all the way home.
Then in 2022 she caught Covid again, again attacking her brachial plexus but this time without pain, she recovered quicker and won gold for Wales at the Commonwealth Championships in Birmingham that summer.
The following summer, she contracted COVID-19 again, this time in her left arm, just 10 weeks before the European Championships, her first chance to qualify for the Paris Olympics.
Although she admits she wasn't 100%, she beat Ireland's Amy Broadhurst in the quarter-finals to book her place in Paris and then move to Britain herself.
Eccles finally made it.
“It's given me a lot of strength in terms of resilience,” Eccles said, “but it's also given me this weird belief that no matter what, I can get through really difficult situations.”
“I'm scared of that. [catching Covid] It's happening a little bit before the Olympics, but I also have faith now that no matter what happens, I can find a way to make my body work even when it's not 100%.
“And it gave me a weird kind of confidence.”
This problem isn't new: Just last fall, Eccles had her fourth bout with COVID-19, which damaged the nerves in her hip joint and prevented her from running for eight months.
However, since he was eight years old, he has been “admiring” the Olympics, and now he is ready to cherish this moment.
Eccles is now ready to step out of the shadows and write his own name in Olympic history.
“I want to win,” she says defiantly. “People might look at me and say think about the process, but I say no, I'm going to go out there to win the gold medal.”
“This is my only Olympics. There are no more Olympics. This is my only chance.”
“But with everything that happened growing up as a kid, and then my boxing career and everything I've put into it, and all the people that have poured into me, it just wasn't something I could take part in.”
“I know if I go out there and give it my all in every match, I can win the gold medal.”
