By Gavin Boyle
Legendary figure skater Scott Hamilton explained how his mother inspired his career and how her battle with breast cancer energized him to skate for something more than his own glory.
“I started in last place. No medals, no spotlight – just a kid fighting uphill. But my mother taught me resilience, faith, and the power of never giving up. Today, every victory honors her legacy. 💛,” Hamilton said on Instagram. “From last to first – proof that perseverance wins.”
Hamilton was adopted by Dorothy and Ernest Hamilton shortly after his birth. She was a strong supporter of his figure skating dreams and was in the stands cheering Hamilton in when he won his junior national championship in 1976, despite being severely ill with breast cancer. She would succumb to the disease the next year.
Related: Olympian Scott Hamilton Says ‘Lord Was Preparing My Heart’ Before Adopting
Dorothy’s resilience as she battled cancer would not only inspire Hamilton throughout his career but hit even closer to home when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1997. He would later face brain cancer in 2004, 2010 and 2016.
“The grief of losing my mother to cancer and how much I loved her was the catalyst for everything that happened afterward,” Hamilton explains on his cancer foundation’s website. “The morning I lost her, I wondered how I could do anything without her. I figured out that I didn’t have to, and I carried her with me every day.”
While Hamilton’s resilience as he faced cancer himself was inspired by his mom, it also brought him closer to the Lord and caused him to take his faith seriously, rather than drifting through life without a firm foundation.
“2004 was the first brain tumor. It just ignited my faith, it was one of those things,” Hamilton told Jennifer Hudson in May 2024. “I told my wife, [and] without skipping a beat, she just took my hands and started to pray, and it was the most powerful – I’ve had a lot of big moments, that was probably the biggest.”
His trust in the Lord amidst his battle with brain cancer would be brought to new heights in 2016 when he felt God calling him to trust Him with the latest brain tumor, instead of having it surgically removed.
“All I felt was [as I talked with the doctor was] just, don’t worry about this. Just go home and get strong,” he said. “They go, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I think I’m going to go home and get strong.’”
“It’s been remarkable,” he continued. “I went back to the scan three months later and they said, it hasn’t grown. I go back three months later and they go, it shrank 45%. I said to my surgeon, ‘Can you explain this?’ And he said, ‘God.’ I went back in, and it shrunk 25% again.”
It is amazing to see how Hamilton has truly followed in his mother’s footsteps and shown extreme resilience in all facets of his life. Praise the Lord for the role model she was and how she left such a strong impact on Hamilton’s life.
Read Next: How Cancer Supercharged Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton’s Faith
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
– Content: +2Share:
– Content: +4