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One is a cancer survivor and another an epileptic. There is a skier who came back from a horror motorcycle crash, another who returned after complicated thyroid surgery.

One athlete has even rebuilt her career thanks to an operation which repaired damage using a deceased donor's tendon.

They are here, happy to be competing.

American free skater Rena Inoue revealed how seven years ago she feared that she would never skate again after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

The 29-year-old Japanese-born skater thought her career was over after a scan revealed cancer in 1998.

Inoue had gone for a check-up for what she thought was a case of pneumonia.

But little did she know that it was the same illness from which her father Masahiko had died 18 months earlier.

"It was at the really very beginning," explained Inoue. "The doctor (said) 'You're lucky'. He was very confident."

After six months treatment of chemotherapy she was given the all clear.

"(After chemotherapy) my immunity system was so low that I was getting colds easy and getting tired easy," she said. "I had a higher chance of pneumonia. But I recovered really quick."

The skater says she owes a debt to her late father.

"It would have been his birthday on February 7," said Inoue. "He was the biggest support for my career."

American ice hockey goalkeeper Chanda Gunn never expected to be at the Olympics when she was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of nine.

It didn't stop her from pursuing a place at university but she was hospitalised because of her condition after just seven games.

When she recovered, the University of Wisconsin told her she had lost her place on the team.

"They released me as unhealthy," said the 26-year-old. "They took my scholarship away and said I wasn't welcome."

But Northeastern University offered her a lifeline and last year she helped the United States to a first gold medal at the world championships.

She still takes medication four times a day but she says there has never been a medical emergency in a game.

Austrian skier Hermann Maier, a double gold medallist at Nagano in 1998, was forced to miss the 2002 Games after a motorcycle crash almost robbed him of his life.

"My lower leg is not the same," admitted Maier who was sixth in Sunday's downhill.

"The calf is much thinner than the other. When I wake up my leg is stiff and later it is tough to close the buckles on the boot. But I can live with it, there's no pain."

Triple skiing gold medal winner Janica Kostelic is also no stranger to the medical profession having undergone surgery to remove her thyroid in January 2004.

She had just been told that if she didn't take a break from skiing, she could die as health and injury worries piled up.

The Croatian, dubbed the Snow Queen, was back on the circuit in October 2004.

"During the months of that break I went out and had fun and did things I had had no time for. But then I got bored and missed skiing."

Australia's best medal hope, defending aerials champion, Alisa Camplin, needed a radical knee surgery in October last year to replace damaged ligaments.

Surgeons used a dead man's Achilles' tendon to repair the injury which was caused when she tried to practice a new jump in training at Lake Placid.

"I never get teary over things like that because you can never take them back," said Camplin.

"I didn't regret the decision to jump."

Camplin is one of only two Australians to have won gold medals at the Winter Olympics. Speed skater Steve Bradbury also won gold in 2002.

(China Daily February 14, 2006)