‘What’s on the other side of cancer?’ – Getting vulnerable and empowered with UK SUP Champion Ginnie Betts

The strongest women paddlers in the UK come from the ocean. They are all-round waterwomen – powerful, experienced and with an immense knowledge of how to read the water. And when they line up against each other, anything is up for grabs.

We followed a number of UK races featuring the country’s top female paddlers, but one race stood out: X Bay 26 in Exmouth held in May, an open-ocean long-distance race where Ginnie Betts finished ahead of two of the UK’s top SUP athletes, Marie Buchanan and Holly Pye.

But it wasn’t simply the victory that caught our attention. It was the story behind it – Ginnie had just returned to the water following a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

A multiple British National SUP Champion and SIC Maui and Black Project rider, Ginnie’s home waters are the beautiful Mounts Bay on the south coast of West Cornwall. She has established herself as one of the leading female paddlers in the UK, with multiple national titles and podium finishes on the international stage in the Women’s 50+ category.

Among her standout performances was an extraordinary triple-gold result at the 2024 ICF Spring SUP Race in Ravenna, where she won the Sprint, Technical and Distance events.

Ginnie’s comeback continued at the Team GB selection races, where she once again dominated the Women’s 50+ division, taking victories in the Sprint, Technical Race and Long Distance.

We caught up with Ginnie to talk about these experiences and what it means for an elite athlete – and what it means for all of us to face limitations beyond our control. Her story goes beyond racing. It is about confronting uncertainty, reclaiming oneself and discovering what lies on the other side of the challenges – and what’s on the other side of cancer.

Ginnie, you’ve made a victorious comeback to SUP racing after nearly two years away, and not only came back – you won a demanding long-distance race ahead of top paddlers like Marie Buchanan and Holly Pye. What emotions are going through you right now?

The first thing I’d like to do before answering any questions is to pay my respect to the memory of Amadine Chazot, her family and her close friends. Breast cancer is a hugely diverse disease – some of us are lucky enough to catch it early. Others, like Amandine had to fight much greater battles, and she did so the way she paddled – fiercely, beautifully and with great courage.

At the beginning of April, six weeks after my final surgery, I started SUP training again, super gently at first. The Exmouth race was at the beginning of May. I turned up with zero pressure to perform; I thought I’d just go with whatever the water and my body were telling me. I just put my head down and followed the bumps and pushed harder on the downwind section…. I lifted my head up to find I was ahead. Admittedly, I should have stopped after two laps (the third nearly did me in!), but I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to finish the race well!

I was very pleased that I had managed to retain some strength and stamina despite three significant cancer surgeries and ongoing immunology drugs. Also, a big thank you to Chris from Black Project who sent me some extra small blades to help with my recovery.

For people who may not know your story, can you explain what diagnosis you received, what treatments and surgeries you went through, and how your health is today?

In August 2025, I felt a small lump at the top of my left breast. I was at the Surf Life Saving nationals at the time and asides feeling more tired than usual, I simply thought I’d pulled a pec muscle or had some scar tissue and did my best to ignore it, until a month later, when it was very much still there, only larger.

When I had my cancer diagnosis, it felt like the world stopped spinning. During those initial few weeks when all the testing is happening and surgery and treatment is imminent, all your usual reference points disappear. Suddenly the future that I had been taking for granted disappeared from view and I was forced to consider every possible outcome – including my own death. It’s terrifying. I had one of the most aggressive forms of Breast Cancer, Her2+ grade 3. The only certain and clear thought that formed in my mind was ‘I want to be a grandmother’ – I wasn’t expecting that and hadn’t really considered my future grandmother status before with any depth, but that longing to be around for my children’s children was the strongest emotion.

Thankfully, I was diagnosed with Stage 1. I still needed three surgeries though in October 25, December 8 and February 16. Unfortunately, each surgery found more pre-cancerous cells around the margins of the tumour and by February it was determined that I needed a mastectomy. It was a significant surgery – effectively an amputation – obviously a big change to a woman’s body with a significant emotional impact that I’m still working through. I’m not getting reconstruction because that’s even more damaging to the body in the longer term.

I also had to have an immunological systemic with a drug called Trastuzumab, which can have serious side effects for the heart. I just had my final infusion last month (Sept 26).

I did my best to stay active throughout each of my three surgeries and my drug treatments. I walked a lot after each surgery, (I wasn’t allowed to lift my arm above shoulder height for weeks at a time, so paddling was out of the question). Because of the impact of the immunological drugs on the heart, I had to have echocardiograms every couple of months and had to be very careful to find the ‘sweet spot’ of exercise, staying healthy, but not over doing it.

The last time we saw you at a SUP event was at the 2024 ICF SUP World Championships, where you entered as one of the favourites as a brand new 50+ division paddler before suddenly falling ill and being hospitalised there and then. Can you recall that event for us, and was it connected to your cancer?

Yes, that was horrible. I had trained so hard for those races with Michael Booth as my coach, I was so ready and in the shape of my life! And then…I went from feeling the fittest I had felt in a long time, to the most unwell I have ever felt, in a matter of hours. I was admitted to A & E because of breathing difficulties, and they couldn’t get my temperature down – I was eventually diagnosed with Influenza A. Maybe I picked it up on the plane. It’s not the first time I have travelled to the States to race and got sick…!

It was hugely disappointing – travelling 5000 miles to stare at a ceiling in an Airbnb rental and miss all the racing. I felt incredibly guilty for taking time away from family. Once I was able to get out of bed, I did attempt the distance race on the final day but after half a lap I knew that I was kidding myself. I stopped, threw up and said hi to a little turtle who bobbed up near my board! It took a good few months to stop coughing after I got home and I became rather disillusioned about committing time to SUP racing after that.

Was that connected to my cancer? I recently discovered that respiratory illnesses like COVID and influenza can, in fact, activate cancer responses or cancer cells. So, who knows? It could be that I always had dormant cancer in my breast, or that it could have somehow interacted with the impact of influenza and the multiple rounds of COVID I’ve had. We’ll never know the full picture.

During the hardest moments of your treatment and recovery, did you ever doubt you would return to racing – or even to paddling at all? What kept you mentally strong?

Ironically, it was the cancer, that pulled me back towards paddling. I had taken a bit of a hiatus from training after Florida. But with the diagnosis, instinct told me to get back on my board – it was like remembering the original reasons I took up paddling in the first place, to feel strong, to find myself, to learn courage and resilience, as well as all the other physical and emotional benefits that moving over the surface of the ocean confers. What kept me mentally strong then was the desire to return to paddling and racing – to be as strong as I could be on the other side of cancer.

As I said, I couldn’t paddle through all the surgeries, but after each one, the goal was to get back on the water as soon as possible and this helped me to really focus on my recovery and healing. Being alone, several kms out to sea, ironically, is also my ‘safe place’ – out there it feels a lot easier to cry and shout and feel it all. I felt an obligation to brave face it whilst on land, with friends and family, I didn’t want to feel weak or to be a burden to others.

Your performance that weekend was incredibly impressive physically. How did you rebuild your body after surgery and treatment, and what role did sport and paddleboarding play in your recovery process?

I’m certain that paddleboarding training helped me to get through this process much more smoothly than someone else who hasn’t trained. There is in fact a project called ‘Pink Paddlers’ from Canada, which uses Dragon Boat Racing as a rehabilitation form for breast cancer patients because of how it strengthens the whole upper body area and has a positive impact on your neurology and musculature which is damaged by surgery and radiation.

Because my baseline was good, I knew I just wanted to maintain as much fitness throughout the cancer treatment process as I could. I also encouraged other breast cancer patients who I met online, who were worried about the long wait before their surgery, to use that time as an opportunity to prepare their bodies and get fit.

After each of my surgeries, I tried to view them as injuries from which I had to recover. I just kept my mind focused on the other side. What steps did I need to take to get back on the water and get to the other side of this?

Fighting cancer often changes a person’s outlook on life. How is this battle has changed the way you approach competition, training, health, or even everyday life compared to before?

It hasn’t massively reoriented my thinking (asides realising that I want to be as good a human being as my best friends – their support was everything). I think, I already had a pretty good handle on what really matters in life – health, family, community, nature, kindness, justice, education…and fun. That’s my list! It’s just consolidated my belief that you shouldn’t waste your time chasing ephemeral or material nonsense and ignore 99.9% of what folks are trying to sell to you or compare you to.

Cancer sharpens your awareness of life’s brevity… and the importance of being grateful for the simple, small and beautiful moments of everyday life – especially being connected to the natural world and to other people. I think the healthiest and most balanced of people have that awareness, with or without a cancer diagnosis.

I haven’t achieved any zen like status, I still have an ego, I still get annoyed over silly things, I still like a good debate, I still fall into short-term thinking, and I’m still processing the shock and pain of some aspects of the cancer journey itself. I’m a single mum of three teenage boys, so although I try to remove myself from more heated situations to keep my cortisol levels a bit steadier, it’s not always possible! But most of all, I’m grateful to be on the other side of it.

With regards to competition, of course having gone through cancer gives you a more balanced perspective and totally challenges that temptation to connect your self-esteem with your results. Sports is healthy competition though. I notice people competing (whilst pretending not to) in all areas of life – relationships, socially, materially, aesthetically, online. Sporting competition however is transparent, measurable and usually fair. No pretence. Open, transparent competition teaches you to deal with vulnerability and failure, publicly. Again, these aspects of SUP competition helped me mentally and emotionally to deal with my cancer journey.

In the 50+ category, I just feel amazed and grateful to be amongst so many badass women who are so fit and healthy and determined ‘at their age’. That class totally flips the narrative of what mid-life women are ‘expected to do’ on its head. I love that, I love their feistiness. I’m really looking forward to connecting and competing with women from all over the world, again. It’s like we’re each other’s health insurance policy – as long as we’re all training, we’re keeping each other on our toes. That’s only a good thing for health and longevity.

Many athletes and non-athletes facing cancer or other serious illnesses may look at your comeback as inspiration. What advice would you give to people trying to stay active, hopeful, and mentally strong while going through their own fight?

I would say, treat it a bit like a really hard race – gather all the information you can, visualise your way through to a good outcome, use all your skills of resilience, vulnerability, determination and keep hoping for impossibly good results, even when you’re at the back of the pack. Keep fighting. Don’t let any naysayers get into your head. Walk alongside people who are better than you or have completed the race already, so they can pass on their knowledge.

My greatest mentors and teachers were other breast cancer patients. It’s an unbelievably kind community- women at all stages of cancer with all kinds of prognosis helping each other along, sign posting each other to better outcomes.

Ginnie at the Spring SUP Race, Italy

After such an emotional and inspiring comeback victory, what’s next for you? Do you already have your eyes on specific races or events this season, and what goals or plans are motivating you now?

So, next week I’m heading out to Alicante actually – not for my own competition, but for my son who made the Under 18 GB Team for Ocean Surf Ski. I’m very proud to support him at the Ocean Ski World Championships in Villajoyosa. From there, I’m going to fly/drive to Italy with my mate Lydia and go and catch up with some old friends at Sabaudia for the SUP World Championships. I always had this goal in mind, to mark the end of my cancer treatment.

Getting to the start line without any respiratory diseases is my main objective – anything else will be a bonus! Next year will be my usual mixture of Surf Life Saving and SUP comps – hopefully with some fun bike packing trips thrown in to keep it interesting – I plan to stare at the stars from my bivvy bag and remember how lucky I am to be here.

Ginnie, thank you so much for getting vulnerable with us and for sharing your experience. We really appreciate your openness, and we can’t wait to cross paths with you in Italy!

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*Images courtesy of Ginnie Betts