When Erin Kennedy returns to the boat at the upcoming European Rowing Championships, the occasion will certainly be a joyful one.

The first day of competition in the championships, which run from 25-28 May in Slovenia, will be exactly one year to the day since the 2020 Paralympic champion was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Kennedy, a coxswain for Team GB, won gold at the 2022 European Championships in Munich in the PR3 mixed coxed four after her diagnosis, but then stepped away from the sport to focus on her cancer treatment.

In the last year, the 30-year-old has undergone 15 rounds of chemotherapy – the final round only finishing in December – and in January underwent a double mastectomy before she was given the all-clear.

"It is a slog. I would not recommend it to anybody I never thought I would as a 29, 30-year-old, from fertility preservation through to kind of chemotherapy, hair loss. It has been big. I have tried to approach it with gratitude for the people around me and I think gratitude breeds positivity and optimism. If you think: 'Okay, not what I cannot do, but what can I do, what do I have?"

Kennedy, Paralympic champion in the PR3 Mix4+ at Tokyo 2020, said she approached her diagnosis just like an athlete and was thankful many of the skills she learned from rowing were able to be transferred to her cancer recovery.

After speaking with her surgeon ahead of the operation, Kennedy said she did extensive pre-hab, which included activation stretching and mentally preparing herself for how her body would change – to aid her recovery as best she could.

But above all, she said the team around her has been the key to her returning to the boat. “Sport has been everything to me in the last five, 10 years of my life,” she said.

"But it's been so much more important to me during this last year and everything that's [been] going on because it's enabled me to compartmentalize, it's helped me to goal setting, it's helped me to be physically fit.

“And the teammate aspect that I’m so used to in a rowing boat, my team’s just got bigger and bigger, from my oncology team to my husband, my parents, my family, everyone. It’s been a big team effort to essentially get me to where I am and keep me on the right track.”

Kennedy’s initial goal was just to make the Team GB training camp in Varese, Italy – she says she cried getting on the flight – and it was far from a given that she would get her seat back.

Her task was made all the more difficult given she started the season with nine rounds of chemotherapy, but with everything she had already overcome to date, Kennedy admitted she has allowed herself to dream of becoming the European champion again.

 "I saw some of those pictures of the Europeans last year in August and the emotions are running high, but only after the events. So that’s my goal: if I can keep the tears in until after we finished, hopefully on the top of the podium.”