Thread by @thetimes

Kat Cordiner, Abby Johnston and Charlotte Irving have shown that rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean can take only 42 days, 7 hours and 17 minutes – a world record for a female trio and one that gave a pummelling to the old record thetimes.co.uk/article/the-at…

More people have climbed Everest than have successfully rowed the Atlantic. Of those who have rowed it, 20% are women.

And Cordiner has terminal cancer. In 2019 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer “by chance” while undergoing treatment to freeze her eggs

She underwent a radical hysterectomy, and in February 2020, shortly before the first lockdown, she and Johnston signed up for the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Rowing Challenge

They met in 2018 when they sailed the North Pacific leg of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and bonded over a love of “bubbles and pizza.”

After 31 days at sea, Cordiner turned to Johnston and asked, “What next?” The answer was: the Atlantic

They decided to take on the challenge as a trio, so Johnston recruited Irving, an old rowing friend from school and university

They set about training on rowing machines and out on the water at Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. They learnt how to navigate, and raised the £120,000 it would take to get them to the starting line

In May 2020, Cordiner’s cancer came back. She endured chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but her doctors have told her that it is incurable and she has years, not decades. She trained throughout her treatment, as much as she could, and never considered abandoning the challenge

She also had a benign tumour on her heart, which ruled out any exercise at all until she could have surgery to remove it. Once her treatment was over, rowing across the Atlantic seemed like a good distraction

🗣️“I was talking to my oncologist about when we should scan before the race — you have to be declared medically fit — and I said, ‘If it’s come back, I’m still rowing. That’s non-negotiable. I’m going to row an ocean’ ”
thetimes.co.uk/article/rower-…

For two years the three spent every minute of their free time training. The routine never varied: two hours rowing, one hour off, for 18 hours a day. From 11pm to 5am they did two-hour solo shifts so the other two could get four hours’ sleep

Five miles out of Antigua, aware that they’d won, they used their free shifts to shower as best they could, using water from a jug, and changed into the clean tops they’d packed so they’d look presentable on the finish line

When they were on the podium, the race director asked them what challenge was up next. There isn’t one, Johnston said firmly. She has had enough ocean rowing. Irving and Cordiner, on the other hand, may try to row the Pacific. Why not?

Read the full story here: thetimes.co.uk/article/the-at…