Raquel Kochhann's has endured a cancer battle on her journey to the Rugby World Cup with Brazil. Photo / Getty Images
“Raquel, I think without your breasts you’re going to be faster.”
For Raquel Kochhann, Brazil’s first five and triple Olympian, that arresting dressing-room comment was exactly what she needed.
She had just informed her teammates about her cancer diagnosis as well as the double mastectomy and chemotherapy treatment that awaited her. Their reaction was a predictable mix of shock and despair. Their dark collective mood was, Kochhann told them directly, of no use whatsoever.
“I said to them, ‘Come on, girls, this isn’t helping. I want you to keep the energy high, make jokes and just enjoy every moment that we have together’,” she says. “Then one of the girls looked up at me and said what she said and I told her, ‘Yes, this is the spirit that I want!’
“The team supported me all the way through the treatment, making jokes and keeping me happy. And when I came back, I did come back faster. My GPS velocity was faster after the treatment. She was right!”
Kochhann was away from rugby for 20 months dealing with her cancer. She had first become aware of it in 2022 while recuperating from a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament injury. The lump on her breast that doctors had told her was benign turned out to be malignant. Her way of dealing with the news was to treat it like another injury.
“I said to my doctor, ‘Okay, what do I need to do now? What is the next step?’” says Kochhann. “She just looked at me. ‘This is your reaction to knowing that you have cancer?’
“And I said to her, ‘If I’m going to cry or be sad, is that going to help me to recover faster?’ She said, ‘No, the opposite.’ And I said, ‘Okay, so let’s do it. What can I do to be well again as fast as possible?’ Then I started the treatment.”
By now you will have realised that Kochhann is a positive individual. Born in Santa Catarina in the south of the country in 1992, she was a sporty child who tried her hand at everything she could with the dream of representing Brazil one day. Athletics, table tennis, futsal, you name it. She played football to a high level until the club she had joined shut down their women’s section.
“I met rugby when I was at university,” she says. “The first training that I went to was contact training. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is my sport!’”
Within a year, she was trialling for the Brazil Sevens squad and within two she had made her debut for the national team. Her timing was impeccable. This was 2013 and sevens was about to make its Olympics bow at the Rio Games in 2016.
“It’s hard to explain in words what it meant to play in Rio because the Olympic Games is just the biggest event in sport,” she says. “In Brazil, rugby is not as famous as other sports, but 2016 really put our name out there as a national sport.
“We are still not so big. We are not so famous. But we have participated in three Olympic Games and in each one we have gone step by step. So we keep growing all the time and more and more people come to know rugby.”
@svnsseries Raquel Kochhann, you are an inspiration to us all ❤️ #rugby #rugbysevens #brazil #paris2024 #parisolympics
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The sport’s profile was given another boost when Kochhann was handed the role of flagbearer for Brazil at the Paris Games last year. It was not just about the rugby, of course. Kochhann’s inspirational story had struck a chord across Brazil.
“I guess it was a message to all the women to show how powerful we can be. Cancer can be just one part of life, not the end of it.”
And so on to this World Cup. Brazil, she hopes, will decorate it with some samba “magic”.
“I think all of our players have at some time played sevens because in Brazil we used to have only sevens, so our handling is good because of that. Everyone, including our forwards, knows how to pass, how to step,” she says.
“This is what makes our XVs a little different because we can play it like a big sevens game or we can play strategy like traditional XVs games. I just want us to play our way and give our best rugby to show to everyone.”
She is determined to make the most of every minute at Brazil’s first Rugby World Cup, which started in Northampton on Monday against South Africa. Her experiences have taught her that life is there to be enjoyed.
“We want to help show to the world that rugby is one massive sport. That it’s not just for men but that women can play in a really beautiful way and differently,” she says.
“It’s a World Cup with the best players in the world. The energy that we’re going to have in a country that really loves rugby is going to be special. I’m sure that it’s going to be a unique moment for everyone that’s going to be there.”
It is reflective of Brazil’s status as exotic outsiders at the Women’s World Cup that they can almost certainly claim to be the only side at the tournament to have scrummaged against a tree.
Captain Eshyllen Coimbra, the Yaras’ 24-year-old second row who hails from Rio’s favelas, laughs at the recollection, explaining they were short on opposition for scrum practice at the time so employed some lateral thinking.
A converted volleyball player introduced to the game on Copacabana Beach through the Rugby Para Todos – Rugby For Everyone – social programme, Coimbra is the most-capped Brazilian women’s player in history. She has played in just 14 tests.
As a nation, Brazil have played only 16 tests, which makes them as green as the Amazon rainforest. The lowest-ranked team at the tournament, the Yaras upset the established order in South American women’s rugby by beating Colombia in a qualification play-off to reach the finals for the first time. It looks a stretch for them just to be competitive in a group containing South Africa, France and Italy, but they are breezily undaunted.
“The World Cup is a great opportunity for us to surprise the entire world and show it what Brazilian rugby is,” says Coimbra. “If you compare us to the other teams that are at the Rugby World Cup, our advantages are fewer but what we do have is a lot of speed. The athletes from Brazil are really fast. We have been working really hard on ways to be able to use that speed in the games.”
Despite their lack of international experience as a XV-a-side entity, they believe they can utilise that pace – and their powerful tree-tested scrum – to pick up a victory.
“Beating France is not realistic but we want to win a game and South Africa and Italy are opportunities for us,” says flanker Larissa Henwood. “We’ve got the whole sevens team playing for us so if we can play wide with long passes we feel like they won’t be able to stop us.
“That’s our idea for the first game and we think we have a chance against Italy, too. This is an opportunity to put Brazil on the map.”
Born in Brazil, Henwood left with her family for Portugal as an 8-year-old and discovered rugby there, going on to represent them at sevens. After diverting to New Zealand to settle with her now-husband Sam, a former Waikato Chief, she made her Brazil debut last November, 11 months after becoming a mother to Skye.
“I don’t play for myself anymore. I want to play for her as well,” says the 31-year-old. “I’ve made a lot of sacrifices for this – we all have as a family – and when this tournament is finished I want to look back at it and reflect that it was worth it.”
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