Page 40 - The Gazette Autumn 2024

40 The Gazette QARANC Association
Them’s the brakes:
QA partners Olympics star in high-speed bobsleigh!
Corporal Kewe King recently swapped the familiarity of the athletics track for the world of bobsleigh, making her international debut alongside Olympian Simidele Adeagbo
Twenty minutes into the Gazette’s interview with Cpl Kewe King, a military nurse with a love of athletics, she lets slip a remarkable fact: she’s the Army pole vault record holder – at 2.71m. She broke the record in 2019 and has been “nudging it up ever since”.
Kewe serves with 1 Medical Regiment, in Tidworth, and in February this year she landed a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel to Austria and partner with an Olympic star, representing Nigeria in the Bobsled. It was a very different challenge to anything the 27-year-old had done before but she embraced it with typical commitment and enthusiasm.
Before we got on to that experience, we spoke about her life’s journey and how she came to join the QAs. Kewe was born in Dublin but moved to the UK with her family before she was a year old. Milton Keynes became her stomping ground growing up, and she recently bought a house there with her husband Tommy Hayes, who she first met at primary school.
Kewe was initially interested in becoming a midwife, after receiving a talk on midwifery at school. And she had always excelled at athletics – her husband remembers one of the older children acting as a pacesetter in running events and Kewe catching them up – so when she attended an open day at Birmingham City University, she was drawn to
It was an amazing experience togoto Uganda and see a different way of life
an Army stall which promised a nursing degree and opportunities to do sport. “It literally was the best of both worlds and perfect for me,” says Kewe.
It was not plain sailing at first: she was accepted into the army but not into nursing on the first attempt. “They said I could try again next year, so I decided to get experience by going to Uganda for 3.5 months to help set up a health clinic.”
That opportunity came via a church-based organisation called Lightforce International which did missionary work in Uganda, India, and Albania. Kewe went there and undertook the role of pharmacist.
“Patients would come in and get prescribed drugs by a nurse, and I would dispense them. It was an amazing experience to go to Uganda and see a different way of life. It helped me put my own life in perspective and realise that many of the things we worry about in the UK are insignificant compared to life out there, but even with the poverty, everyone’s still so humble and happy. They all appreciate education, whereas here it’s sort of taken for granted.”