Top horse trainer Jessica Harrington shares how she coped with cancer diagnosis
In 2023, Jessica revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2022.
The Cheltenham Gold Cup-winner is now two years cancer free and the 77-year-old opened up about how she got through her cancer treatment, even during her toughest days.
She told the Irish Mirror: 'I'm great. I'm two years coming up. And I feel great, and I'm very lucky, and I know, and it just shows that, you know, if you put your head down, take the treatment - it's not nice, but I always got up every morning, worked away - and be positive.
'I think you have to be positive. Anyone who talks to me and they said, how do you get through it? And I said, 'Okay, you need some support. Family is a great support. Friends are a great support'.
'But at the end of the day, it's up to you. Your attitude, I sort of felt like, you know, if I feel miserable, this thing will get a hold on me. I almost treated it like it was alive."
'It sounds very strange,' she told us at the launch of this year's Irish Champions Festival.
Jessica praised staff on the oncology ward for having to 'put up with grumpy old people like me'.
'You know, the treatment I got was amazing. And the people, those people in those oncology wards, are just amazing. Those nurses are just amazing, you know, and what they have to put up with grumpy old people like me,' she said.
Jessica joined Aidan O'Brien for a star-studded Irish Champions Festival launch earlier this week at The Leinster in Dublin.
Speaking about what horses will race from her yard that weekend, she said: 'I know we will have a few that weekend. I'm not sure. I'm not certain what yet. You know, time will tell.
'We're still six weeks out and a lot can happen in six weeks. Yeah, I'm kind of hoping that I might have Hotazhell there, but he ran Saratoga and it just depends, he could easily turn up there, which would be very exciting. Jessica Harrington had huge praise for staff working in oncology wards in Ireland
'And I'll have various other ones in this handicap and that handicap. I ran a nice two-year-old the other day, Suspicious Minds. There will be horses there but at the moment it is still evolving.'
The festival kicks off on September 13 in Leopardstown and will finish in The Curragh on the following day.
Now in its 12th year, the Irish Champions Festival offers over €5 million in prize money and 17 exhilarating races, with six Group 1 races among the two-day race programmes.
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