Since being diagnosed with breast cancer last month, Kikkan Randall has wondered how this could have happened to her, an Olympic gold medalist coming off the pinnacle moment of her career.
Randall stood atop the podium in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on Feb. 21 with her teammate Jessie Diggins after winning the first Olympic gold medal by an American cross country skier. The only mother on the U.S. Olympic team last winter, Randall came back from taking a year off for maternity leave to compete in her fifth Olympics.
“We obviously see that cancer doesn’t discriminate,” Randall said in a phone interview Friday.