I Won't Be Here For My Kids

The devoted mum has one dying wish.

- Monique Balvert-O'Connor

Former Olympic and Commonwealth Games road cyclist Jacinta Gray has August 22 in her sights. The date marks the greatest challenge of her life, but it has nothing to do with sport – it’s the day her youngest child will start school and Jacinta has her heart set on being there.

Jacinta (née Coleman), 42, has terminal bowel cancer. Her shortened lifespan is being measured in weeks.

Her husband James tells Woman’s Day that he and Jacinta have only recently revealed to their children, Max, 13, Scarlett, six, and Rory, four, that their mother isn’t going to get better.

Shares James, “Telling them that Mummy potentially isn’t going to be here much longer was the hardest thing in this whole journey for me so far.” Also incredibly difficult was the day of the cancer diagnosis, when a “mortified” Jacinta – who represented New Zealand at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur – turned to her husband and said, “I’m so sorry, James. You have married the wrong woman.”

James feels “utter disbelief”, he says. “It still doesn’t seem real, but it really is. It’s a big shock, but life still goes on. We have to keep the kids’ existence as normal as possible.”