'Covid attacked my nervous system' - Olympic-bound Eccles

Rosie Eccles (R) celebrates qualifying for the Paris Olympics at the 2023 European Games.

Rosie Eccles says it feels 'surreal' to finally be selected for the Olympic Games after four bouts of Covid-19 attacked her nervous system and left her fearing for her boxing career.

The 27-year-old from Caldicot in south Wales missed out on Tokyo 2020 after suffering intense pain in her right arm and neck before the Olympic qualifiers in London.

It was later found she had contracted Covid in early 2020, which had then affected her brachial plexus - a network of nerves in her shoulder.

The same thing has happened three more times since and Eccles started to doubt her Olympic dream would ever come true.

"It's been a long road," she told BBC Sport Wales.

"I always felt like I was running towards it and it was getting closer - but someone kept just moving it a little bit further away.

"It's surreal to look back at everything that's happened and think 'I actually got through that and now I'm here'."

'It gave me a different type of fire'

Even as a teenager, Eccles had health issues to overcome.

Within months of putting on some boxing gloves for the first time at 15, she was diagnosed with a heart condition that required surgery.

At 21 she was selected for her first Commonwealth Games for Wales - but had to settle for welterweight silver after her defeat in the final to England's Sandy Ryan.

She already had eyes on bigger things - the Olympic Games. The boxer known as 'Right Hand Rosie' began 2020 ready to seal her spot in Tokyo.

But after contracting a 'mysterious virus' on a training camp in America, Eccles began to notice an intense pain in her right arm. Within weeks she had lost 80% of function in it.

The Olympic qualifiers were taking place in London that March: day one brought a full house to the Copper Box Arena at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; day two saw an injury-affected Eccles lose her first bout to Russian Saadat Dalgatova.

On day three the coronavirus outbreak meant the event had to move behind closed doors. By day four the event was cancelled and within weeks the Olympic Games themselves had been postponed.

Eccles, like everyone, was plunged into lockdown. The pain of missing out on her first Olympics was matched by the pain in her right arm and neck. She began to fear she would never be herself again, let alone a boxer.

"It cost me my Olympic dream," she continued. "But the lowest point was probably then being in lockdown and having to deal with the situation. You train so hard for something and not only did you not achieve it, but there's now nowhere to train and you've got an injury that you don't know what it is.

"We didn't know if it was ever going to get fixed. And actually could it affect even normal life? At the time I thought 'what's this even teaching me? It seems so unfair'. But it's given me a completely different appreciation for what boxing's given me, how I really wasn't done.

"To come back from that has given me a different kind of fire."

Eventually she was able to return to training but Covid continued to impact the sporting calendar and Eccles never got another chance to qualify for Tokyo.

In June 2021 she was in GB Boxing's gym as 11 of her team-mates posed for photos on the day their Olympic selection was confirmed.

Eccles looked on enviously and admits she cried all the way home.

Then in 2022 she contracted Covid again, and again it attacked her brachial plexus - though this time without the pain. She came back quicker and won Commonwealth gold for Wales in Birmingham that summer.

The following summer she caught Covid again and this time it attacked her left arm. There were just 10 weeks to go before the European Games - the first opportunity to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

She admits to not being 100% but she managed to secure her Paris place with a quarter-final win over Ireland's Amy Broadhurst, before she switched to GB herself.

Eccles had finally done it.

"Resilience-wise it's given me a great deal," said Eccles. "It's also given me this weird belief that, no matter what, I can come through in really challenging situations.

"I do fear a little bit [catching Covid] before the Games. But I also have this underlying belief now that no matter what happens, I can find a way to make it work with a less than 100% body.

"So it's given me a weird confidence."

The issue is not in the past. Just last autumn, Eccles got Covid for a fourth time and on that occasion it attacked the nerves in her hip. She could not run for eight months.

But after "idolising" the Olympic Games as an eight-year-old, Eccles is ready to make her moment count.

She trains with Lauren Price - Wales' trailblazing Olympic champion who recently became world champion in the professional ranks.

Eccles is ready to step out of that shadow and write her own name into Olympic history.

"I want to win," she says defiantly. "People might look at me and say you've got to think of the process but I say no, I'm going out to win a gold medal.

"This is my one Olympics. There are no more Olympics. This is my one shot.

"But since being a kid and everything that's happened growing up, and then into my boxing career and everything I've put into it - and all the people that have put into me - it's not been to just go and be a participant.

"I know if I turn up and take one fight at a time and bring my best, I can win that gold medal."