“I wanted the world to see the real me”
Olympic heroine Joanna Rowsell, who suffers from alopecia, on why she refused to wear a wig to accept her gold medal
Joanna Rowsell still can’t quite believe she hs won gold at the London 2012 Olympics. ‘It is a bit surreal,’ she says. ‘And it’s going to be pretty hard to top.’
Equally difficult for her to take in is her overnight status of an inspirational role model – we need more like her!
After roaring to Olympic victory in the women’s cycling track event, 23-year-old Joanna removed her helmet to reveal she is almost totally bald. Joanna has suffered with alopecia for 13 years — and chose to ascend the Olympic podium, watched by a worldwide audience of 17 million, to collect her medal without her wig.
Why did she take the podium without her wig or hair on?
‘On one level it was a case of “this is just me’. I get off my bike, take my helmet off and that’s who I am,’ she says. ‘I did know it would be making a statement — I just didn’t anticipate the size of the reaction.’
All over the world, commentators praised her courage, while her website was inundated with messages from fellow alopecia sufferers thanking her for making such a positive statement.
‘I’ve had tweets and emails from all over the world from people telling me how much it has helped,’ she says. ‘One mum wrote to say her daughter had developed alopecia and was worrying so much about it, but that now she had seen me she felt more confident about the future. ‘Stories like that make me realise it was worthwhile.’
Hair loss condition: Olympic cycling heroine Joanna Rowsell has suffered from alopecia for 13 years
Role model: Joanna is still taking in her Olympic win with Dani King (above left) and Laura Trott
HAIR LOSS: ALOPECIA AREATA – the most common form of ‘auto immune’ alopecia – afffects one in 100 people
Alopecia occurs when the immune system becomes confused and attacks the body’s own hair follicles, causing the hair to fall out in patches that can eventually spread to the entire head.
Joanna, who grew up in Cheam, Surrey, was diagnosed aged ten when her thick auburn hair started to disappear. One eyebrow went, then the other, then the hair from her scalp in big chunks along with her eyelashes. She was, she admits, bewildered. ‘At that age you don’t really understand. I remember crying and saying to Mum and Dad: “Why is this happening to me?’ It was so upsetting.’ Countless visits to doctors and specialists with her parents, bank worker Roger and school accounts manager Amanda, both 52, all ended with the same message: the condition was incurable.
By the time Joanna went to secondary school, she was completely bald save for a few tufts. ‘I did feel self-conscious. I’d wear a hat to go the shops to try to stop people staring. It didn’t make me angry — I understood I looked different — but it wasn’t easy. Fortunately she was not teased at school, in fact she was greatly supported by her friends.
Olympic champions: The cycling trio in action during London 2012
‘I used to tell myself it was temporary, it would grow back, even though months, then years, went by and nothing changed. In some ways my way of dealing with it was not to deal with it, to pretend it was a phase.’ On reflection, she admits that she hid herself away. ‘I didn’t do all the normal teenage stuff. I didn’t bother with clothes or make-up because I didn’t want to focus on my appearance. I threw myself into my studies. My teachers used to tell me I would burn out as I worked so hard. But, to me, working hard stopped me worrying about the future.’ Then there was the cycling: at 15, Joanna was scouted by the British Cycling talent team when they visited her school in Sutton, Surrey. At the time she had little interest in cycling but, after clocking her incredibly fast time in a school trial, the scouts felt she had raw talent and she started to train. ‘It was nice to find something else I was good at, that I could focus on,’ she says. ‘I started to put all my energy into that, too.’
The Cycle of Hair Growth, Hair Loss and Hair Regrowth begins
Then, at the age of 16, the thing she had longed for happened: her hair started to grow back. Within a few months it fell to below her ears. ‘I was thrilled,’ she says. ‘It came out of nowhere, and the only thing I could think of was that doing sport had helped. But it changed everything. It was so nice to leave the house and feel normal.’
Then, cruelly, it started to fall out again. ‘In the summer I had a full head of hair and by Christmas it was pretty much all gone,’ she says. ‘That was horrible. I’d had a glimpse of what life was like with hair, and now I had to go back. My heart would sink when I saw another clump coming out.
‘I went over and over something I might have done differently that had changed it, but, of course, there wasn’t anything. She went through that process again three years ago, when her hair again grew back in patches, although this time only for a month. After the previous cycle of hope followed by disappointment, it was another crushing blow.
‘I felt differently this time,’ she says. ‘There was a sense of “I don’t want to go back to where I was’. That’s when I started to look into having a wig.’
Winning smile: Joanna has become a role model for girls with alopecia
The Journey of finding a Wig and renewed Self Confidence
Inspirational: Joanna says she has about ten wigs and changes them according to her mood
It was something she’d avoided before, confessing today that on some level it scared her.
‘I can’t really explain it, but I just didn’t want to. Maybe doing it would mean properly confronting the fact that I had lost my hair. There is still part of me that is in the process of accepting it. It’s weird to think about being in my 50s and still in the same situation.’
This time, though, she was determined. She enlisted the help of a friend, and together they went to Selfridges in London for a wig trying-on session.
‘I wouldn’t have gone without her, but after I got over the fear I realised it could be liberating. That, suddenly, I could be in control and I could have hair whenever I wanted, look however I wanted.’
She emerged from the shop with two wigs: one dark brown and straight with a fringe for daytime, and a dark curly one for evenings. ‘I bought another one, a blonde bob,’ she says. ‘I loved it. It felt like a new me. I remember trying on all these different clothes and just really enjoying it. I felt more feminine. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long.’
Interestingly though, not everyone felt the same. ‘I wouldn’t say some people were negative, but for close friends and family it was almost as if they had to get to know a new person and some of them found that weird.’ Among them was her boyfriend Dan…… the pair met through cycling when Joanna was 18 and were friends before they became a couple three years ago. ‘He had mixed feelings about the wigs, and still does,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t mind them, but, in all honesty, he prefers me without. To him, that’s the girl he fell in love with,’ she says.
Standing on the podium was, unsurprisingly, her finest hour, although she confesses to some initial reluctance at the notion of becoming a sort of poster girl for alopecia after her appearance alongside team mates — and friends — Laura Trott and Dani King.
‘I suppose I didn’t want to be known as the girl with alopecia,’ she says. ‘There’s part of me that thinks: “I’m not ill, there’s nothing wrong with me.’ Most of the time I don’t think about it.’
For all that, she has sent a powerful message about self-image. I tell her that one female commentator who has suffered from female pattern baldness and been dogged by insecurity wrote this week of how she wished there had been a Rowsell when she was growing up.
‘If I had been fortunate enough when I was younger to see a girl like Rowsell ride that race and then proudly accept her medal without her wig, I am sure I would have felt completely different about it all,’ she wrote.
Joanna is clearly moved. ‘That’s lovely,’ she says. ‘If I can make a difference to young girls with the same issue then that’s a responsibility. If they can look at me and think it’s not the end of the world and they can still do what they want to do, that’s pretty amazing.’
As, it must be said, is Joanna
