World Heart Day: Gymnast Becky Downie on coping with loss

"I don't feel like the same person at all," British gymnast Becky Downie told Olympics.com, nigh on three years after the loss of her younger brother Josh Downie to an undiagnosed heart condition.

"I think that it's been hard to be a new person and trying to do the same things," said Downie when we spoke to the two-time world medallist ahead of the 2024 national championships, a key indicator of the team that would be selected for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 months later. Becky would go on to make that team, 16 years after her first selection to Team GB as a 16-year-old at Beijing 2008.

"You do feel a bit different and accepting that too can be challenging, but it's definitely been a journey for sure."

That unwanted journey started on 6 May 2021 when Becky and sister Ellie received a call while preparing for the GB Olympic trials for the delayed Tokyo 2020, that their 24-year-old PE teacher brother had collapsed while playing cricket in Liverpool and could not be revived.

The pair, who also have an older sister Gemma and brother, Alex, withdrew from the trials, with Becky's heartbreaking post on Instagram days later stating:

"No words can describe the pain we as a family are all feeling right now.

The world is so cruel sometimes and no one is ever ready for anything like this to happen.

...A life without you is unimaginable and not one I ever wanted to live but know you will never be forgotten.

We will forever be the Downie 5 ✋🏽"

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Becky Downie on the loss of her brother, Josh

Josh died from an undiagnosed heart condition called arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), a genetic condition for which the rest of the family had to be tested.

"We didn't know whether we had it or not, and if we did, then yeah, pretty much our (gymnastics) careers were game over," Becky told us. "So it was definitely a really difficult thing to process on top of already horrific circumstance with the family.

"It's a condition that could potentially develop later in life, so we've got to be tested forever now, but at the minute everyone is healthy, which is really positive."

The family have since supported British Heart Day, which is held today, the 29 September, and have campaigned for awareness of CPR and defibrillators. Becky and Ellie have also become ambassadors for the British Heart Foundation, doing everything they can to stop other families from going through the same indescribable pain they continue to endure.

For herself, on receiving the physical all clear, Becky opted to take up the offer from British Gymnastics of a delayed trial for the Olympic Games in Japan.

Ultimately, contentiously, she was not selected, but looking back at that experience now, Becky is proud of herself.

"I worked too hard to not see it through," said Becky, who had also been at the forefront of the call for change within the sport as part of the gymnast alliance movement. "I know Josh wouldn't have wanted me to stop for that, for him being the reason.

"I don't really know how I did it, to be honest. I think I'm quite good at just pushing things to the back of my mind and just carrying on."

That mindset, honed over years of training that has provided epic moments such as world silver on bars in 2019, a first-ever world medal for Britain in the women's team competition with bronze in 2015, plus European team gold in 2023 to add to her two-continental bars titles, enabled Becky to have the drive to come back to the sport for an attempt at making her third Olympic Games (having missed out on London 2012), at Paris 2024.

Overcoming a potentially career-ending Achilles' tear in 2022, one of a number of major injuries and surgeries from which she's returned, Becky competed at the Bercy Arena in France's capital, making the bars final, and ultimately finishing seventh.

"After the challenges of the past few years, it’s changed my whole perspective on life," wrote Becky post-Paris. "It magnified what was really important to me and that life really is too short. If you believe you can do something, don’t let anyone try to convince you that you can’t."

Coping with loss every day

But the loss is there every day, so how does Becky manage?

"That's a really good question.

"I think when it initially happened for me, it was something that training kind of helped take my mind away from it and to keep some consistency in that respect.

"I think I just have to be mindful when I do get into that headspace, like it's okay to be sad about it, it's okay to still be upset about it.

"It's never going to go away, nothing's ever going to make it right either and I think just communicating as well, like when I am feeling like that, I know my coach knows me really well, when things are going on.

"Sometimes I do want to speak about it, sometimes I don't want to speak about it, but I think just working through it and appreciating how you feel and knowing that that's okay to feel the way that you feel.

"Definitely it changes you as a person for sure."

A post shared by Becky at the time of our interview encapsulates her feelings on coping with grief: "Trauma creates change you don’t choose & healing creates change you do. Recovery is a process, it takes time, it takes patience and at times it’ll feel like it’s taken you right back to the starting line.

"All you can ask of yourself is to keep trying and appreciate all the progress you are still making along the way."

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