Down to one kidney, still full of beans

Facing repeated risks to her life from kidney failure, Ottilie Quince is determined to keep bouncing back - on and off her bike

- Chris Marshall-Bell

There are times while listening to Ottilie Quince’s story that it seems just too surreal to be true. It’s as if the world has conspired against her for most of her adult life. “Sometimes when I tell people my story, they say, ‘It sounds like madeup bullshit’,” she says, “but I promise you it isn’t.”

The lively, fast-speaking and outgoing 41-year-old would not be alive today were it not for her mother’s donated kidney, transplanted 17 years ago. Then again, that very same transplanted organ has twice almost killed her after the cocktail of medication required daily provoked cancerous growths. On both occasions, Quince has survived – but cancer could come again at any time.

Throughout it all, she has become an 11-time world, eight-time European and 18-time British transplant cycling champion, while also running her own bike shop, guiding business and physiotherapy clinic in her adopted home of Majorca, Spain. As she recounts every dramatic twist, turn and sucker-punch to me, she does so with striking exuberance. “I feel like I was made to deal with all of this s**t,” she says. “I’m happy it’s all happened. It’s changed my life, but I’m resilient.”

Devastating diagnosis