“Scary” – Gymnastics Community Offers Prayers as 33-Year-Old Star Reveals Struggles After 3 Gruesome Surgeries

Venue? – The city of love. Stage? – The grandest of all. Occasion? The return of a gymnast to the Olympics after 8 years. “I’m super, super proud,” were her words when she was interviewed by the Olympics themselves. “I was actually really emotional when I stepped in the arena,” she said. The gymnast, then 32, led Team GB in the women’s artistic gymnastics competition. In the team final, she delivered a standout performance on the uneven bars, earning the highest score of the day with a 14.933, contributing to Great Britain’s fourth-place finish, narrowly missing the podium by just 0.234 points. But behind her return, behind every swing she made at the bars, was a private struggle… a struggle she is now talking about.

“This is a very personal post, but one I wanted to help raise fibroid awareness with,” Becky Downie wrote in her recent Instagram post. “If you’d have asked me a year ago what a fibroid was, I’d have been clueless, along with many of my family and friends.” Uterine fibroids are non-cancerous growths that develop in or on the uterus, often during a woman’s reproductive years, and can vary in size from very small to large masses that distort the uterus.

She writes, “A few months before I went to Paris I thought I could feel a lump in my stomach. I told my medical team but no one else was aware of what was going on. Initially it was thought to be tight muscle, and having defined abs from training made it a bit more difficult to diagnose.” Gearing up for an Olympic return, she had started her season at the Cairo World Cup in February. Little did she know back then these lumps were uterine fibroids. However, in her defense – given her physique and the nature of her training – the fibroids could have been difficult to diagnose initially. 

“Not long after returning from Paris I could feel something wasn’t right and could visibly see and feel something was inside my stomach,” in an interview with BBC, Downie had talked of taking a break for her mental and physical well-being. Little did she know that she would be undergoing surgeries during this time. She first realized that she had the disease when the ultrasound results came in. She wrote, “At first I wasn’t too worried hearing how common these can be but my situation escalated quite quickly (course it did 🙄) Not only did I have multiple fibroids, mine had grown extremely big and were causing further complications.”

Treatment for uterine fibroids includes watchful waiting, medications, and non-surgical procedures like embolization to cut off the blood supply to fibroids, causing them to shrink. And ultimately, surgery. What did she choose? In her very own words, “Due to them being so big it wasn’t possible to have them removed through keyhole and required open abdominal surgery to remove them.” 

The gymnast further continued, “Despite having many surgeries in my career, this one was much scarier being a non injury related issue, with risks impacting future fertility and being a much more invasive procedure.” Becky Downie has undergone several surgeries throughout her career, including ankle surgery in 2018, elbow surgery in 2017, and an Achilles tendon rupture in 2022. But her open myomectomy – removal of the fibroids while preserving the uterus – was the most intimidating. Thanking her medical team, she touched a light note: “I have no idea how this recovery will be and no idea where I was hiding them 😅 but 10 fibroids were successfully removed and my future health and fertility preservation were put at the forefront of all these decisions.”

Having been done with surgery, she added, “I’ve never felt more grateful to be home and recovering from a surgery, this one was a big one and was pretty scary. 3/3 surgeries complete ….. 2025 please be kinder to me now !! 🤍”  2025 may or may not be kinder to the British gymnast, but her fans surely are.

Gymnastics community sends prayers for Becky Downie

Up to 80 percent of people with a uterus will deal with fibroids in their lifetime, according to the Mayo Clinic, and these things can be as big as around 8 inches. Clearly that’s what left one fan saying, “Best wishes for a speedy recovery!“

Difficult as it might be, its always better to share one’s struggles to inspire others. With that idea, one fan wrote, “Bless you I had to have a hysterectomy as mine where so severe but luckily I had had my family by then. Take care of yourself and remember to be kind to yourself.” Hysterectomy is another one of the surgical methods where the uterus is completely removed. This is considered when other treatments aren’t effective, or if child-bearing is not a concern any more.

Another fan had nothing but love and prayers for the gymnast when she wrote, “Wish you a speedy recovery 🫶🏼! Thank you for rising awareness ☺! And all the best for the rest of 2025, you deserve all the good things and moments 🥰!” Recovery from a myomectomy can take up to six weeks.

A 2024 survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the Society of Interventional Radiology found that more than half of women aged 18–34 (56%) and 51% of women aged 35–44 were not familiar with or had never heard of uterine fibroids. So when the three time Olympian took to her Instagram with 98.9K followers, how could fans not thank her? One commented, “Thank you for sharing something so personal, but so important. To anyone else out there suffering with fibroids or gynae pain: please don’t do what I did, and put up with your pain & misery being dismissed as ‘usual women’s things’ until it was too late.”

We do know now what putting up with it can do (close options for healing). British Paralympic athlete, Charlotte Henshaw also entered the comments to say, “Sending love to you! Powerful of you to share your experience. Wishing you a speedy recovery ❤️“. And  a lot of people from the gymnastics community have been sending messages along this line as do we, wishing Downie the pink of health soon!