These Heavy Black Bones

By the age of fifteen Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell was world number one in the 50m breaststroke. Over the next three years, she would go on to become a double British champion, sports personality of the year in Kenya and make the GBR Olympic team. She was the first Black woman to do so. But this story is not about making history. This is the story of how she got there, what it cost her and, more importantly, why she walked away from it all. From swimming in wild lakes and the Indian ocean, to chlorine-damaged skin, gruelling training and press scrutiny, Rebecca charts her career’s ascent in stunning prose. Laying bare the pressures at the core of competitive swimming and meditating on Blackness and identity, ‘These Heavy Black Bones’ is a compulsive study of intensity and the ecstasy and agony of peak physical performance.