“I felt like I’d lost everything,” says Strictly Come Dancing professional Amy Dowden on her mind-set on the finish of her cancer treatment in 2024. “I’d lost all my hair, I’d lost my strength, I was a different weight. I was ready to hang my shoes up.”
For followers of Dowden’s zestful dancing and candy, Welsh giggle, it appears unthinkable that she might doubt her place beneath the glitter ball. But in May 2023, aged simply 32, she was identified with Stage 3 breast most cancers and underwent a mastectomy. Then, in July of that 12 months, she was identified with a second kind of most cancers requiring chemotherapy.
The therapy meant she missed that season of Strictly and triggered a cascade of brutal unwanted side effects: she contracted sepsis in August, broke her foot in November after which suffered a blood clot on her lung in December.
Terrified of dropping her id as a dancer, she returned to Strictly in 2024 as a result of “I just couldn’t face watching another series on the sofa at home”. She was paired with JLS singer JB Gill, and the pair shook it “like a Polaroid picture” whereas jiving to Outkast’s “Hey Ya!”. But she collapsed backstage with a stress fracture in her shin on the sixth week of the competitors and was changed by Lauren Oakley.
Today she shakes her head – taking a second to relish the shiny swing of her regrown hair – and acknowledges that “I went back too soon. But it’s so hard. You just want your life back. It takes a long time to recover from the chemo but because you feel a little bit better every day afterwards, it’s so difficult to tell when you’re really ‘back’.”
She credit her shut good friend and fellow Strictly professional, Carlos Gu, with serving to her return to type in 2025 for the pair’s ongoing stay tour, Reborn. “We got back into the training room and Carlos said: ‘We’re not letting cancer take dancing from you. You’ve got through it. You’re going to get strong here again. You can do this.’” Gu has accompanied her on ambulance rides and talked to her on the telephone late at night time when she has discovered herself in tears. He’s supported her by means of a second preventative mastectomy in November 2025.
But he has additionally been on his personal voyage of self-discovery and acceptance. The Chinese dancer – who received the 2025 collection of Strictly with footballer Karen Carney, after Dowden and Apprentice star Thomas Skinner had been voted off first – relocated to the UK largely so he might escape homophobic attitudes prevalent within the nation of his beginning and stay brazenly within the UK as a homosexual man.
“Not all our viewers are aware of what a long journey Carlos has been on,” says Dowden. “His dad was murdered before he was born. He was raised by a single mum. It’s been so wonderful to watch him really coming out of his shell since he joined Strictly [in 2022]. It’s been a joy to see him explore new ideas, to really be true to himself. This tour is a celebration of both of our stories, a celebration of how far we’ve both come.”
Born in Caerphilly, Wales in 1990, Dowden and her twin sister Rebecca didn’t come from a performing background. Their dad is a carpenter and their mum works in accounting. Dowden didn’t get the dancing bug till she talked her sister into coming into a dancing competitors together with her on a caravan vacation when she was eight.
“I only won that competition because I was wearing a massive badge saying it was my birthday,” she laughs. “But I loved the music, the spotlight, the attention and my winner’s medallion. From that moment, I knew I wanted to be on the stage. So my parents found a little local dance school.” She grins. “I think they thought it was just going to be something to keep me busy on Saturday mornings. Little did they know!”
Dowden inherited her grit from her “very hard-working” dad and mom, who made her look ahead to Christmas and birthdays for brand new dance footwear and costumes. Her mom had survived most cancers earlier than she was born (and once more when her twins had been 21) and Dowden discovered from her “not to let the disease define me”.
Dowden was additionally identified with Crohn’s disease on the age of 11, present process a number of surgical procedures as she grew up. “In a way, that helped me cope with cancer, because I’m used to enduring things, getting on with life regardless. My motto from a really young age was ‘Don’t get bitter, get better!’”
Her struggles together with her personal physique meant she understood the challenges confronted by JJ Chalmers, her fourth Strictly accomplice. The TV presenter and Invictus Games competitor was injured by a bomb blast in 2011 whereas serving in Afghanistan as a Royal Marine. His proper elbow disintegrated.
“I remember when he came into the training room and he couldn’t even lift his arms up properly,” she says. “But his physio was blown away by how the dancing helped his body do things he couldn’t do before. Watching that progress in his body and his confidence was, for me, way better than winning any glitter ball trophy. Here was a man who’d seen his friends die and I was so proud to help him make it all the way to the quarter-finals.”
She will get cross when she thinks of the office discrimination towards individuals with power well being circumstances reminiscent of Crohn’s. “We feel even more punished by our health struggles when people won’t take you for a job because they think you might be unreliable. We’re often so much more reliable. Other people will take a day or two off with a cold and we’ll push right on through because we’re used to the pain. We crack on.”
Although there have been stories that Dowden was upset – presumably bullied – by her actor dance accomplice, Danny John-Jules, in the course of the sixteenth season of Strictly, she says she’s made from sterner stuff than that: “I never felt frightened or bullied by him.”
It was this identical dedication to honour her obligations that meant Dowden turned the first-ever skilled dancer to flip down Strictly when she was first invited to be a part of the present in 2016, as a result of she and now-husband, Ben Jones, had labored so arduous getting ready for the 2017 British Open Latin Dance Championship.
“Strictly was obviously a massive opportunity, the dream,” she says. “But Ben and I had worked so hard for the competition. I was living with Ben’s family, who had sacrificed so much for our dream. I couldn’t let down our coaches, our sponsors…”
She admits this meant the strain to win that competitors then turned “immense” however that the sensation was “magical” when she and Jones turned the primary all-British couple to win the competitors for 30 years. “It all worked out in the end because I got to do Strictly the following year. So I’m glad that I stayed true to myself.”
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Dowden and Jones married in 2022 and froze 5 embryos earlier than her most cancers therapy within the hope of changing into dad and mom sooner or later. In the meantime, they’ve each “adopted” Gu into their household. They joke that the spare room of their home is Carlos’s room. He calls her mum and pop “Mama and Papa” and has spent the final two Christmases with the household.
“We can fight like cat and dog,” she tells me as we speak, “because we’re like siblings.” She says “Carlos will tell me when my outfit doesn’t look good. He’ll say: ‘Who told you that you look good in that?!’ And I love it, because he’s being honest. Then he’ll come and adjust my hair to make me look fabulous…”
Throughout our interview, Dowden fiddles together with her hair, wrapping the curls round her fingers. She “braved the bald” by shaving her head after the chemotherapy made it begin to fall out. She refused to disguise away, baring her scalp on the pink carpet on the Pride of Britain awards in October 2023. “Sharing the journey helped me because I felt I was helping others.”
Now, she’s frank about “enjoying the simple pleasure of just having hair back. I love restyling it…” She is aware of the “cancer journey is a long one” – she’s acquired a gathering together with her oncologist after our video name – however she’s additionally brimming with enthusiasm about touring with Carlos.
“We’ve got one of the singers from Strictly and the most phenomenal costumes.” What’s her favorite? “Oh, the one for ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, with so many coloured crystals…” she tilts her head right into a dance-swoon. “That’s the one that always makes the audience go: ‘Ohhhhh- ahhhh!’ You can hear them sighing.”
Dowden closes her eyes to conjure the second. “It makes me realise that, despite it all, I’m actually very lucky.”
The ‘Amy and Carlos Reborn’ tour starts in Basingstoke on 30 May
