Explaining how the couple broke the news of Sir Chris’s cancer diagnosis to their children, Lady Sarra said: “I wanted to make cancer and chemotherapy part of our lives.”
She also revealed how a cherry blossom tree in the family garden had been adopted by the family as a symbol for her husband’s cancer treatment after realising it was due to flower around the same time his chemo was scheduled to end.
The interview showed how they created a painting of a tree to which they added bits of pink blossom each day as Sir Chris went through his treatment.
An emotional Lady Sarra said the idea behind the project was that the family was “helping daddy regrow” and that she also wanted her husband to see the “trees are stripped bare, stripped down to nothing, but that they regrow”.
Sir Chris, 49, said: “By the end of the chemo, it was into springtime and this cherry tree was growing.”
The Olympic icon joked that the tree was the “inverse of me where I was getting more and more unwell with it but that, actually, seeing that, I was getting through this”.
