Lindsay Crouse

<h1>Gabriele Grunewald, the elite runner who gained the support of thousands of followers on social media for her perseverance in competing while facing a rare metastatic cancer, died Tuesday in Minneapolis, where she lived. She was 32.</h1>

The cause was complications of cancer, said her husband, Justin Grunewald, who confirmed her death.

In the blur of professional athletes racing one another, it was easy to spot Grunewald: A scar, crimson and hook-shaped, stretched 13 inches across her abdomen. It was a constant visible reminder of the illness and procedures she endured.

The cancer that interrupted her athletic goals emerged in 2009 and would return over the next decade in various forms.

The first of her operations, for a tumor in her neck, damaged a facial nerve that changed her smile forever. Even though she said it made her cringe to look in the mirror, she smiled often — especially at starting lines.

As she openly chronicled her experience with “this challenging-professional-runner-battling-cancer-journey,” she found a community of runners of all abilities; they credited her for inspiring them on the track and she derived strength from their support.

“Brave Like Gabe” became her motto, and the name of a foundation she started for cancer research.

She considered her scars a sign of her ability to handle adversity and encouraged others on social media to do the same.

“My scars represent survival,” she wrote on Facebook this year. “My scars teach me to embrace my body and honor its strength. My scars are a physical manifestation of what often feels like an invisible disease. My scars tell my life’s story, and I’m pretty glad it’s not over yet.”

Gabriele Anderson was born on June 25, 1986, in Perham, Minnesota, about 200 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

She was a walk-on with the running teams while studying at the University of Minnesota. Getting faster each year, she transformed herself into an NCAA All-American in the 1,500 meters in her last collegiate race, despite receiving another diagnosis of cancer.

She first learned she had adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer of the salivary gland, on the day before a race in 2009. (She ran anyway, and logged what was then her fastest 1,500-meter time.) She learned she had thyroid cancer in 2010, but she kept getting faster. She spoke little of her diagnosis during that time, preferring to focus on her progress on the track.

After graduating from college in 2010, she decided to become a professional athlete, competing as a middle-distance runner even as she was aggressively treated with chemotherapy and operations to have tumors removed.

In 2012 she ran in the Olympic trials, failing to qualify by one spot, finishing fourth.

In 2013, her time of 4 minutes, 1.48 seconds made her the 11th-fastest 1,500-meter runner in American history.

And in 2014, she won the U.S. indoor national championship in the 3,000 meters.

But the adenoid cystic carcinoma recurred in 2016 and 2017, and she decided to tell her story publicly, even though sharing came with its own set of challenges.

“I’m a young adult with cancer,” Grunewald told The New York Times in 2017. “I don’t always love talking about it. It’s not a made-for-TV movie. It’s real. It’s scary.”

In 2016 she raced for a place in the 1,500 meters in the Rio Olympics. She made it to the finals of the U.S. trials.

There were graver challenges: Shortly afterward, she discovered a new mass on her stomach, and surgeons cut a large tumor out of her liver. By 2017, they found new tumors, and she began interspersing chemotherapy sessions with training sessions — racing at an elite level while on her fourth bout with cancer.

Still hoping to recover, she began training to qualify for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

“Being brave, for me, means not giving up on the things that make me feel alive,” she wrote on the website of her cancer research foundation.

She married Justin Grunewald, a marathon runner she met in college, in 2013.

“I was slightly nuts,” she told The Times. “I kept telling him, ‘I don’t want you to stay with me just because this is a sad story!’”

In addition to her husband, she is survived by her father, Kim; her mother, Laura; her sister, Abby; and three brothers, Zack, Caleb and Ben.

Even this month, her doctors said she was expected to die imminently. Her husband passed the news on to her. “Not today,” she responded, and she managed to continue a little while longer.

After her cancer had returned yet again, she told The Times: “I was hoping it would not come until I was 40. I wanted to get a little more of life in first.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/obituaries/gabriele-grunewald-dead.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Gabriele Grunewald, runner who chronicled journey with cancer, dies at 32

The cause was complications of cancer, said her husband, Justin Grunewald, who confirmed her death.

It was a fitting — and wonderfully characteristic — response to a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that will go into effect Wednesday, prohibiting her from racing against women in that event unless she reduces the level of natural testosterone in her body. And it encapsulated how Semenya, a gay black woman from a South African township, has dealt with a decade of almost unimaginable adversity: with the kind of poise and stoicism few of us are able or ever compelled to muster.

While there’s no easy answer to the broader debate about who belongs in women’s sports, it’s spectacularly unfair that Semenya has had to endure this toxic combination of racism, sexism and homophobia; the court even admitted that its ruling discriminates against her. No one disagrees.

We can only speculate about how she feels when she’s forced to expose her own body to astonishing degrees of invasive scrutiny and is called a man and far worse. That’s because she keeps quiet.

But we do know how she works: She races to win, she shakes her opponents’ hands and she follows the rules. Meanwhile, she stays true to herself. And she perseveres.

Her ability to behave like this — to endure — is a trait of real champions, athletic and otherwise. We should celebrate her demonstration of character just as we do for our other heroes. Her fight is just as great a feat. As is her athleticism; it’s a shame that we hear more about the hormone levels of one of the most decorated female athletes today than her achievements.

Paradoxically, Semenya has become one of the world’s most visible female athletes right when she’s being told she can’t be one. She’s impeccable (she has to be), exhibiting all the qualities of sportsmanship we look for in athletes, regardless of whom they race.

What’s more remarkable is that Semenya, and her determination to keep showing up, are forcing us to pay attention to female athletes and the extent to which we value them.

That attention has been scant. One recent survey found that 0.4 percent of sports sponsorships go to women. And when was the last time a woman’s track race featured prominently in news coverage? Who aside from a handful of enthusiasts can name the other women in photos of the starting lines in Semenya’s 800-meter races — the ones that would take her place on the podium?

One of those women is Olympian Kate Grace. She was in a photo of a 2016 race that accompanied a New York Times Instagram post about the court’s ruling this week. The photo showed Semenya winning a qualifying heat for the 800-meter final at the Olympics in Rio, with Grace behind her, in third place.

To Grace, that photo has a different significance: It showed, she told me, “the moment in the last 10 years that most altered my life.”

“I’m behind her, grimacing to finish,” she added. “I’m about to run 1:58 in the 800 meters, a personal record, to nab the qualifying spot for the Olympic final.” Just a year earlier Grace had been too injured to run. So, for her, that photo is a depiction of her validating an entire athletic career. That’s what we should celebrate, for all the women involved. But that moment is getting exposure now only because of the focus on Semenya, not because of all those women’s accomplishments.

If Semenya ends up being unable to compete in the 800 meters, there is plethora of talent to fill the void. Beyond Grace, there is Ajee Wilson, the American who won the bronze medal at the most recent World Championships. There are also Grace’s teammates on the Bowerman Track Club, Colleen Quigley, Courtney Frerichs and Shelby Houlihan, whose names have been in The Times exactly once and who are aiming to qualify for the Olympics next year, with help from their other teammate, Shalane Flanagan. We should care about all of them.

Without Semenya, we wouldn’t be seeing them or talking about them right now.

Of course we can debate Semenya’s testosterone levels, and we should debate how we should define who belongs in women’s sports, if we want to preserve them. (And we do; even Semenya wouldn’t be able to rival men on the global stage.) But those debates alone aren’t going to save women’s sports. Watching them, and investing in them, and being fans of them will. Let’s celebrate these women more often than just when we’re telling Semenya she can’t run with them.

Meanwhile, Semenya has said this: “I know that the IAAF’s regulations have always targeted me specifically. For a decade the IAAF has tried to slow me down, but this has actually made me stronger. The decision of the CAS will not hold me back. I will once again rise above and continue to inspire young women and athletes in South Africa and around the world.”

It’s ironic that there is such an outcry over a sport that’s relatively ignored in the first place. Yet this referendum on the value of women’s sports could be good for it, and Semenya’s dignity amid such adversity is an example of why we should love women’s sports in the first place. If we pay attention.

When One of the World's Most Visible Athletes Is Told She Can't Be One

Just two days after a rule was upheld that would prevent her from competing in her best event, Caster Semenya cruised to a victory over an elite field in the 800 meters in Doha, Qatar, on Friday.

When one of the world's most visible athletes is told she can't be one

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Lindsay Crouse

Articles written by the author

Gabriele Grunewald, runner who chronicled journey with cancer, dies at 32

When one of the world's most visible athletes is told she can't be one