When, just a few months ago, Archie Goodburn was being rushed, by ambulance, to hospital in the depths of a seizure, representing Scotland on the international stage this summer seemed a very dim and distant prospect.
The breaststroke swimmer, who turns 25 today, has brain cancer. Two years ago, after noticing several unusual symptoms, he underwent a battery of tests and scans and was told he had three tumours in his brain. And they were inoperable.
The news was, understandably, devastating for the swimmer who had represented both Scotland and GB on the international stage prior to his diagnosis. Post-diagnosis, Goodburn continued to swim and, thanks to medication and treatment, his health stabilised and he went months without any seizures at all. Until this April, that is.
Just days before the Aquatics GB Championships, which doubled as the Scottish trials for next month’s Commonwealth Games, Goodburn’s first seizure for quite some time happened. And it was, he recalls, the worst one he’d ever had.
“It had been over a year since I’d had a seizure and then ten days out from the Commonwealth Games trials, I had one,” he recalls.
“I ended up in hospital for two days - it was probably the most severe seizure I've had since I was diagnosed. With my previous seizures, I’ve come out of them myself but this one went on for a long, long time. It was very traumatic, to be honest.
“It went on for about seven hours and I was just trying to remain conscious. It was terrifying.
“I was at the maximum dosage of my anti-seizure drugs, so I had to just wait it out and hope that it’d end soon.
“And then on top of that, I’m lying there thinking this is so close to the trials so that's my chance of the Commonwealth Games gone.
“I do try and be positive but lying in that hospital bed, that was probably my darkest moment.”
The after-effects of that seizure lasted several days and so even Goodburn’s participation in the GB Championships was in severe doubt, never mind his ability to produce a performance of any note.
But, as he’s become accustomed to doing, Goodburn defied the odds and swam remarkably well at the national championships, finishing third in the 50m breaststroke behind winner, Adam Ramsay-Peaty, which was enough to ensure he was included in Team Scotland’s swimming squad for Glasgow 2026.
Goodburn’s selection for what will be his second Commonwealth Games comes on the back of the swim of his life earlier this year.
Having broken his personal best in 2025 - a significant post-diagnosis milestone for Goodburn - he went even faster in February of this year, lowering the Scottish 50m breaststroke record to 27.12 seconds.
While swimming a personal best is always significant for any elite athlete, this significance was multiplied ten-fold for Goodburn.
“I had PB'd just before Christmas, which was a dream in itself. But then what happened a few months later was even more incredible because I broke the Scottish record,” says Goodburn.
“Brain cancer affects everything, including your recovery and so you just don't know how you're going to react to things but I had good results coming out of training. But to swim like I did was just the stuff of dreams. Initially, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be swimming so well so early in the year but I'm glad I had done that time because, just a few months later, I had my seizure just before the trials.”
Goodburn’s impressive performance in the pool is all the more remarkable when considering quite how hectic his life is.
In addition to regular, and often unplanned, medical tests and appointments, Goodburn, who is on Edinburgh University's Elite Performance Swimming Programme, will soon graduate with a first class degree in chemical engineering. But it’s his advocacy work to improve things for brain cancer sufferers about which he’s particularly passionate.
Read more: Olympic athletes are being ripped off; they need to be treated better
Sarah Adlington chasing history but remaining philosophical as retirement closes in
As time has passed since Goodburn’s brain cancer diagnosis - his specific type of brain cancer is Oligodendroglioma, which is the biggest cancer killer of people under the age of 40 - he’s become increasingly comfortable speaking publicly about not only his own situation but, more importantly in his eyes, the dire state of affairs when it comes to funding for particular types of brain cancer.
Two areas in which he’s particularly vocal are, firstly, the dearth of funding for DIPG, which is an aggressive form of brain cancer in children. Over the past ten years, the grand sum of zero has been invested in researching DIPG. And there’s also been zero spending on Goodburn’s form of cancer, Oligodendroglioma.
And, in the same vein, there has recently been two jobs made available as part of the National Cancer Plan to research rare cancers but the positions are, combined, dedicating just 5.5 hours per week to researching all 14 types of rare cancer which have been outlined in the Rare Cancers Bill.
So little financial backing being put into researching these cancers is, asserts Goodburn, unacceptable. And it’s exactly the reason why he’s using his own story to give a platform to the wider issue.
"I do feel passionately about speaking out about the situation in terms of funding," the Edinburgh man says.
“There needs to be an awareness of these statistics, and a change to the current spending.
“I've learned so much about brain cancer in the past two years - I probably know more about it than I do about chemical engineering, which I’ve been studying. And I’ve become part of the brain cancer community and so I think it's just so important to push for increases in funding and improvements in research.
“I could make a difference, and it's a difference not just to other people's lives, it's also a difference to my life. When you hear a stat like no money has been spent in the past ten years on certain cancers, I feel it’s so important to speak up because it can have a real-life impact.”
Over the next few week, though, at the forefront of Goodburn’s mind will be doing everything he can to ensure he’s in peak form when he stands on the blocks at Glasgow 2026.
Englishman Ramsay-Peaty will, of course, be the favourite to win gold but the improvement in the overall standard of the 50m breaststroke in recent seasons means the competition for a place on the podium at all will be incredibly fierce. Indeed, such is the upswing in standard across the board in the event that the times Goodburn has swum recently would have been enough to win a medal at every other Commonwealth Games in history, yet silverware next month is far from guaranteed for the Scot.
Goodburn has, though, allowed himself to dream about what would not only be a fairytale outcome for him personally, but also one that would be celebrated across Scotland and beyond as a result of the esteem in which Goodburn is held having dealt with his illness with such dignity.
“A medal in Glasgow would mean absolutely everything, although I don't want to pin everything on getting a medal, because obviously it will be very hard to do,” he says.
“I just have to focus on controlling the things I can control, and obviously, if I swim a PB, I would have to be happy with that.
“I do think about getting on the podium, but I am also aware of not getting too caught up in that. But getting a medal would be huge because it would be a real physical symbol of everything that's happened over the past couple of years. It actually wouldn't be about the medal itself, it would be about everything that I've been through to get to that point.”
