Even to the fittest, sports often come down to who copes best with adversity.
No pain, they say, no gain. The example was never more profoundly defined
than in Jane Tomlinson, who was told seven years ago that she had terminal
cancer.
She met that condemning sentence by doing things that she had never attempted
before – the London and New York marathons, ironman triathlons, riding a
tandem from Rome to home, and crossing America, coast to coast through the
Rockies and deserts on a bicycle. That became her last feat.
Jane, the bravest woman I have known, died on Monday night. She was 43. Her
legacy lives on in the sum of £1.75m that she raised for charities she
believed in. Her husband, Mike, her daughters, Suzanne and Rebecca, and son
Steven will attend the funeral service at St Anne’s Cathedral in Leeds on
Friday. Millennium Square may not be big enough to accommodate all those who
will rightly be drawn to the public screening of the service.
In a sense, Jane started to become extraordinary on the August bank holiday of
2000, when a cancer specialist told her that she had “possibly months [to
live]. Go home and spend what time you can with your family”. He got the
second part right. The family was Tomlinson’s strength, her purpose. The
oncologist underestimated her Yorkshire grit, her desire to do something to
be remembered by, her willpower to stretch months into years of living on
the competitive edge. She was just 5ft 2in and never weighed more than 8st.
Her athletic experience before those fateful words was practically nil.
It was Belinda Archer, her breast cancer nurse and family friend, who had the
brutal task of telling the Tomlinsons that there was no cure, but who
inadvertently planted the seed of Jane’s mammoth deeds.
Archer mentioned that she had run the London Marathon. “I fancied that I could
do that,” Jane said. “When you are faced with your own mortality, you can’t
put things off for another year. Facing a life- threatening illness, you
lose control of elements of your life, but if you want to do something,
you’re not going to get another opportunity.”
Some time later, having cycled from her shift as a paediatric radiographer in
Leeds to her home in Rothwell, West Yorkshire, Jane spoke while she cooked
the children’s dinner. Somehow I was an invited guest, despite asking her if
running was an extreme alternative to waiting for death.
“That’s exactly why I’m doing it,” she answered. “I was reasonably well before
the cancer – now I’m poorly, but fitter. Going out and facing the challenge
is me doing something rather than waiting around and feeling sorry for
myself.”
Nothing and nobody in my 40 years of observing sporting champions at the
height of their powers provides a more compelling human story than that of
the Tomlinsons.
On Jane’s tandem bicycle ride from Rome to Leeds, she pedalled with Luke
Goward, her younger brother, an NHS casualty nurse, past the spot where the
British cyclist Tom Simpson died during the 1967 Tour de France. It is a
barren, forbidding Alpine peak on Mont Ventoux, a fearsome climb even for
professionals who, like Simpson, resorted to drugs.
Jane, inspired after reading Lance Armstrong’s autobiography of overcoming
cancer to win seven Tours de France (It’s Not About The Bike: My Journey
Back To Life) remembered the exhilarating descent rather than the grim
climb.
Her husband, sometimes left at the foot of her mountains, sometimes waiting at
the finish of marathons, always there in support, always planning the
logistics for events he feared his wife was taking too far, seldom let his
guard slip.
“I’m a passenger, really,” he said. “It is not my bus to control. People say
it must be harder watching. Well, it’s bloody hardest when she runs the
marathon quicker than me. But however bad it is for me, I knew that I would
get to see the kids grow up, and Jane didn’t have that.”
Mike Tomlinson, an IT consultant, opposed in theory some events his wife
dreamt up to push herself. Jane had the last word, though, not because Mike
was too weak, but because he put all things to a family vote, and he lost
all the votes.
He will not let go of the charitable work that grew every time they looked at
it. A Leeds all-comers 10km street race, inaugurated in her name in June,
will doubtless again be oversubscribed for years to come, and Jane’s appeal
actually grew by £50,000 on the night she died.
The next morning was difficult, but yet again Jane’s spirit proved
inspirational. “Jane passed away really peacefully,” Mike reflected, “but
this was my first few minutes alone. Just as I was feeling low, I looked
across the room. Jane was on the TV news, and they chose a clip of her
saying, ‘I’m still here. You should never be sad for what you haven’t had,
you should be happy for what you have had’. “ ‘Blooming heck’, I thought,
‘She’s speaking to me now from beyond the grave’.”
Macabre humour sometimes got them through bitter times. The cancer eating into
her bones in seven areas of the body could be dulled by medication, but to
achieve her aims Jane put off chemotherapy or radiology and battled on
through indescribable pain.
“Marathons,” she said, “are like daily life. There are times when it doesn’t
matter if you are feeling nauseous, or you can’t feel the tips of your
fingers, you are dizzy or hallucinating. You’ve got to keep going. The
achievement is getting over the line.”
Sometimes running beside her, more often waiting at that line, Mike would fear
the worst. “Because she was putting off treatment,“ he said, “the worst-case
scenario was Jane being paralysed, because the spine became brittle.”
Fearing disability was worse than the inevitability of death. Cancer had
struck for the second time: when Jane was 26 she had a mastectomy and
believed that it had got rid of the cancer. Her response to that, too, had
been positive: she studied to becomea radiographer, and right to the end
wondered how on earth young mothers coped with the distress of gravely ill
children.
She thanked God to have seen Suzanne, 21, and Rebecca, 19, mature into “two
lovely, lovely ladies”. She tried to keep going to see 10-year-old Steven
start secondary school. Save for the odd demonic woman who made foul phone
calls accusing her of faking cancer, and the insensitive television reporter
who tried to ask her to record something he “could show after her death”,
the Tomlinsons were as uplifted by public support as we have been by them.
Without the publicity, Jane reasoned, she could never have hoped to raise
money to fund vital hospital units or cancer research. Yet on the two
occasions she was awarded The Sunday Times prize for inspiration at our
Sportswomen of the Year awards, she and Mike made their excuses and
attempted to slip away from the evening early.
Was she unwell? “Not really,” they would reply, “we feel like gatecrashers
among all these celebrities.”
Gatecrashers? The 800 guests, including Paula Radcliffe, Tanni Grey-Thompson,
Kelly Holmes, Tessa Sanderson, Pippa Funnell, Ellen MacArthur and Denise
Lewis, spontaneously applauded Tomlinson in a way that none of us will
forget. Her feats were beyond sport. They were almost beyond imagination.
The ovations and tears were heartfelt admiration for a woman who found a way
to defy death for seven years.
Last Tuesday evening, Simon Snow, one of 45 volunteers in the 2004 London
Marathon team that The Sunday Times organised on Tomlinson’s behalf, called
to say that he was out running, wearing the “Run for Jane” T-shirt with
pride.
A story of courage
1990 diagnosed with breast cancer
Aug 2000 scan reveals multiple secondary cancers. She is given six
months to live, but decides on the same day she is going to run the London
Marathon
May 2001 takes part in her fi rst race, the 5km Race for Life
2002 completes Great North Run in Newcastle in 1hr 51min, four minutes
ahead of her husband Mike Apr 2002 completes London Marathon
May 2002 wins Woman of Achievement Award in Leeds in recognition of her
courage in running the London Marathon
Aug 2002 crosses the line in the first half of the field in the London
Triathlon
Dec 2002 wins Helen Rollason Award at Sunday Times Sportswomen of the
Year awards, below. Also honoured at BBC Sports Personality of the Year show
Mar 2003 cycles from John o’Groats to Land’s End on tandem with her
brother Luke Goward
Jun 2003 awarded MBE in Queen’s Birthday Honours
Aug 2003 completes the Ironman UK Triathlon, the only person to finish a
triathlon while having chemotherapy
Jun 2004 Jane and Luke complete 2,000-mile, five-week tandem bike ride
from Rome to Leeds
Jun 2006 cycles 4,200 miles across America
Jan 2007 Jane and Mike launch Run For All, a 10km charity run held in
Leeds in June. It will become an annual event
Monday, Sept 3 Jane dies, aged 43, after raising £1.75m for charities,
including Macmillan Cancer Relief, SPARKS, Damon Runyon Cancer Research,
Yorkshire Cancer Centre and Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice. Within 24
hours of her death, £50,000 more was donated
If you want to contribute Telephone donations can be made on 0845 1200
829. Postal donations, with cheques made payable to ‘Jane’s Appeal’, should
be sent to Yorkshire Building Society, 46-48 Commercial Street, Rothwell,
Leeds LS26 0AW. For all inquiries please email info@janesappeal.com
