Slovenian Olympian Katja Fain Reveals Leukemia Diagnosis
Slovenian Olympian Katja Fain revealed this week on social media that she is battling chronic myeloid leukemia.
Fain posted on social media this week detailing “the hardest race of my life.” An Olympian in Tokyo and Paris, the 25-year-old had withdrawn from European Championships and the Mediterranean Games this summer due to a health matter. This week, she revealed that to be a bout of blood cancer that was revealed to her on June 30.
Fain said that the chronic condition is manageable with a pill regimen. She won’t undergo radiation or chemotherapy, and the hope is that several years of oral treatment could manage the condition to the point of neutralizing the condition to live medication free.
She added that she doesn’t know what it means for her swimming career. She is under a pause in heavy training and competition, with no certainty if she’ll get back to it.
“And this is where it hurts the most,” she wrote. “The oncological medication I am taking have several possible side effects, anything from general symptoms to nausea, headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue … to more serious complications with the heart, lungs and so on. There is no known case of an elite athlete with this condition in the world and no doctor can tell me that I can safely train intensely every day and nothing will happen. At this time, I am not allowed to do any hard training session, all-out efforts or hypoxic work. I am also strictly prohibited from competing. This is where my life has been turned upside down, put under a question mark. I am living in uncertainty and it is something I am struggling to handle.”
Fain swam on Slovenia’s women’s 400 freestyle relay at the Paris Olympics, finishing 14th. At the Tokyo Games, she swam in the 800 free, 1,500 free and 400 individual medley, her best result a 15th-place result in the latter.
She is part of national record relays in the 400 free and 800 free. She owns national marks in the short-course 200 free, 400 free and 200 butterfly as well as a pair of relays.
Fain won a bronze medal in the 400 free at the European Junior Championships in 2017 and in the 200 free at the European Short-Course Championships in 2021. She is a four-time medalist at the Mediterranean Games, two of them gold.
Fain said she will continue to train lightly with the hope of getting back in the water competitively one day.
“Swimming has taught me to be resilient, to be strong, to never give up, to always get back up and try time and again, to be determined and to never let things go so easily,” she wrote. “… Nothing will stop me from trying and giving it everything I have for a chance to one day stand on the starting blocks against, ready to dive in the water.”
