Canada’s Kirsten Sweetland placed 41st in the Rio triathlon this morning and though it’s not the finish she was hoping for, the 27-year-old is proud to have even made it to the Olympics after two years of extreme health issues have set her back time and time again.
“I didn’t know if I was even going to make the team earlier this year,” she said after the race. “I’m obviously disappointed. I would have liked a better result, but I’m just happy I put it all out there and did my best,” said Sweetland. “Our sport is not easy. I was just praying I’d make it through the bike course today. That was the biggest hurdle for me. I did get dropped from the front pack on the first hill and then caught up. I gave everything I had to stay in contact. When I got to the run, I just became focused on finishing and I gave it everything I had to the end.”
After this morning’s race, Sweetland confirmed over social media that the most recent of her struggles have come down to late-stage Lyme disease, which she was diagnosed with after WTS Yokohama in May.
“I’ve kept quiet because I didn’t want it to define my Games experience in anyone else’s eyes, or my own” Sweetland explains in her post. “We now know that I have late-stage Lyme disease. I’m so proud to have made it this far under such circumstances and couldn’t have done it without the amazing doctors I was able to work with… I’m not accepting this as a sentence, just another setback.”