Pictures: Amalia Osborne
Overcoming thyroid cancer and later a serious spinal cord injury, the journey of Paralympic cyclist Anna Taylor to winning a silver medal in Paris has been fraught with health challenges.
Time and time again, the 33-year-old Cambridge-based athlete has risen from the canvas and, with the love and support of her family and friends, delivered on her sporting ambitions.
“It was cool to have my family in Paris cheering me for a happy reason. They’ve been through some crappy times with my health issues,” Anna tells Woman’s Day. “Throughout, my family has always been in my corner championing me.”
An energetic child, the fourth of five kids raised on a lifestyle block in Taupō, Anna was encouraged into sport by her mum Raewyn, 66. A competitive swimmer in her youth, Anna later discovered a passion for rowing. She was a student at St Peter’s School in Cambridge at that time.
While taking up a rowing scholarship at Oregon State University, Anna was relishing the prospect of studying in the US, only to experience major medical trauma in her freshman year. She felt fatigued for months and struggled to swallow. Doctors diagnosed her with pneumonia and eventually found a massive lump in her throat.
From there, her life turned upside down when a biopsy revealed she had thyroid cancer. The first step was surgery. Facing a battle for her life and with her father Kevin in Afghanistan as part of the Police Provincial Reconstruction Team, Anna’s family in New Zealand rallied in support.
“Kevin and I had robust conversations about what was best for Anna,” says Raewyn. “We wanted to maintain as much normality as possible, which meant Kevin continued with his role. Life is full of obstacles that we can either chose to confront head on or shy away from. Staying at uni was part of that decision.”
While Anna, who was then 19, remained in the US, feeling unwell ahead of the operation and progressively worse afterwards, her mum and Auckland-based aunt Beverley Allan travelled to the States to be with the athlete at what was her lowest ebb.
“I would genuinely not have been able to go through surgery without their support,” says Anna. “Having Mum and Bev there removed some of the fear.”
Fortunately, Kevin was able to join his daughter as she faced subsequent radiation therapy. She went on to recover, eventually graduating with two degrees. But five years after her cancer operation, Anna started to encounter back pain, which lingered for months.
Unable to get out of bed one morning, she was taken to Waikato Hospital. There, doctors found that Anna had a severe prolapsed disc. It had compressed her spinal cord and required emergency surgery for acute cauda equina syndrome.
“A Google search about this condition was probably the worst thing I could have done,” tells Raewyn. “My first concern was whether Anna was going to become a paraplegic. That felt very confronting – more than the cancer diagnosis.”
While the condition did not lead to paraplegia, it has caused a permanent disability. Anna now has a neurological weakness below the point of injury. Waking up from surgery, Anna recalls the mental strain she faced coming to terms with her condition.
She explains, “My mindset was, ‘I can’t do this again knowing the energy levels required to mentally recover,’ but my dad was as pragmatic as ever. He just replied, ‘What other choice do you have?’”
Buoyed by her father’s comments, she set about adapting to her disability with her introduction to Para sport playing a huge part in her rehabilitation. Anna started out attending a Para-cycling training camp in 2018. She was gradually seduced by the speed of competing in the velodrome and on the roads, which offered a fresh outlet for her competitive spirit.
Anna has since developed into a world-class rider. But the past few years, she has continued to throw up more health challenges. After a lingering concussion, she succumbed to a mystery virus that led to fatigue and a racing heart rate.
Yet showing typical resilience, the two-time Paralympian has shrugged off her medical issues to become a world champion in the omnium class in 2023, before winning that wonderful silver medal in the Women’s C4 3000m Individual Pursuit at the Paris Paralympic Games.
“What I’m most proud of is not the silver medal. It’s the fact that Anna has never given up when there were multiple times she could’ve,” says a devoted Raewyn.
Meanwhile, Anna’s aunt Beverley, 65, says, “Seeing her pick herself up no matter how many times she has been knocked down takes huge courage. Anna is an inspiration to all the wider family.”
For Anna, it’s been wild ride – one she just couldn’t have survived without the unstinting support of her family. She smiles, “I’ve put them through hell through my health challenges, so winning silver was my thank you to them.”
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