Chaunte Lowe is the story of determination, perseverance, and strength. Born January 12, 1984, in California, Olympic medallist Lowe said that beating breast cancer, only to come down with a potentially life-threatening case of COVID-19, has added fuel to her desire to defy the odds and make her fifth U.S. Olympic team for this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games.
Lowe graduated from John W. North High School in Riverside, California, where she won the National Scholastic Indoor Championships twice. She also won the 2001 CIF California State Meet in the high jump. Among her first successes was a high jump bronze medal at the 2003 Pan American Junior Athletics Championships. Lowe was eventually able to realize her childhood dream of going to the Olympics at only 20-years-old in 2004, making her the first woman from Georgia Tech’s track and field team to become an Olympian.
In 2005, Lowe won silver at the 2005 World Championships to become the first American woman to win a World Outdoor Championships high jump medal since Louise Ritter won bronze at the inaugural event in Helsinki in 1983. Although she placed sixth in the high jump final at the 2008 Summer Olympics, in late 2016, the International Olympic Committee stripped Russians Anna Chicherova and Yelena Slesarenko, and Ukrainian Vita Palamar, of their placements ahead of Lowe due to positive tests for banned drugs, which resulted in Lowe being awarded the bronze medal for the event. Lowe has broken the American Record 3 Times and is the current indoor and outdoor American record holder with 2.02m (6’-7.5”) and 2.05 (6’8.75”) meters respectively.
Sadly, in 2018, Lowe found a “rice-size” lump in her breast, but a doctor initially wrote it off. “There was something internally tugging at me, telling me, ‘No. Pay attention to me,’” she said. In 2019, Lowe was diagnosed with triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer that disproportionately affects Black women. “I’ve always been one that’s faced challenges head-on. Battling breast cancer, through that process, I decided to get a double mastectomy,” she said in an interview with Essence. “ I went in and got chemotherapy for several months, and from that, I decided to go ahead and train for the Olympics. And this was before Covid and all that. Through the chemotherapy treatments, I was training the whole entire time for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.”
Last year, her eldest child began displaying symptoms of COVID-19, a disease the Olympian was told to avoid at all cost given her compromised immune system. “When I found out all five of us had COVID, I was terrified,” Lowe told Reuters in an interview. “Once again having that conversation with my husband, telling him goodbye.” Thankfully she and her family recovered but she has been honest about the fact that training has been difficult due to those lingering COVID-19 symptoms on her recovering system.
Lowe isn’t working alone to tell her story. She partnered with beauty brand Olay to empower and impact other women by praising their offerings, specifically the Regenerist Whip with SPF 25 and the Collagen Peptide moisturizer. She says the hydrating products have helped her deal with the skin changes that came with chemotherapy. “I was able to use those products together to kind of get me through that chemotherapy process. I fell in love with them. So I keep using them and I’m trying to look like my mom and my grandma,” explained Lowe. She was awarded the NCAA Inspiration Award in 2021 for continuing to share her story to raise awareness and provide hope for others.
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Boitumelo Masihleho is a South African digital content creator. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Rhodes University in Journalism and Media Studies and Politics and International Studies.
She’s an experienced multimedia journalist who is committed to writing balanced, informative and interesting stories on a number of topics. Boitumelo has her own YouTube channel where she shares her love for affordable beauty and lifestyle content.
