July 13--Four years after his promising triathlon career was interrupted by Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic tissue, Geneva's Kevin McDowell won the silver medal Sunday at the Pan American Games in Toronto.
McDowell, 22, finished just one second behind Mexico's Crisanto Grajales after a battle in the final straightaway that lasted until Grajales pulled ahead in the final 25 meters.
"It was a big battle to get over everything I went through and I had to take a lot of time off, and then coming back," McDowell told teamusa.org. "At one point I didn't know if I would get back, so this just verifies what we've done is right in taking the time and the patience.
"It means a lot and it means I'm back; I'm better than I was. It just means exciting things to come."
In March 2011, McDowell was coming off a season in which he had won a bronze medal at the World Junior Championships and a silver at the Youth Olympic Games. He had just debuted on the professional circuit when his mother noticed a swelling below her son's left collarbone that was diagnosed as Stage 2a Hodgkin's lymphoma.
He would undergo a 12-session, six-month course of chemotherapy.
After some setbacks from pushing too hard too soon to regain his fitness, McDowell took an extended break from training in 2012 and began a slow rebuild. He showed his career was getting fully back on track last season by winning the World University Games triathlon and taking second in a World Cup event.
"It's an amazing story with what he's overcome, what he's gotten through," Pan Am teammate Hunter Kemper, 39, a four-time Olympian whom McDowell counts as a mentor, told teamusa.org. "I think that valley that he's gone through got him on the podium today. The kind of perseverance and courage that he's shown, it's pretty impressive."
