Jaimi Kenny’s long-term battle with alcohol and anxiety
While an eating disorder certainly contributed to Jaimi Kenny’s shocking death, it was a long battle with alcoholism and anxiety which left the 33-year-old with nothing to fight the devastating loss of a love many friends hoped would help her recover, Annette Sharp reports.
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From her elevated position high on her mother’s broad shoulders on the pool deck of the Henderson Swimming complex in Auckland New Zealand at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, wide-eyed two-year-old Jaimi Lee Kenny could have almost glimpsed her whole life mapped out before her.
There would be the continuation of the jetsetting glamour lifestyle aboard the family’s private fleet of planes and helicopters at age three, media opportunities alongside her “Golden Girl” mum and “Ironman dad” by four, national TV ad campaigns for Uncle Toby’s before she turned five, then followed a promising breaststroke career by 12, a spot on the dais at the swimming nationals by 16, attentive boyfriends, success, adulation.
What no one imagined back in 1990 as the world’s media clamoured for a shot of the beaming flaxen-haired toddler on the victory podium, was that life as the celebrated firstborn child of Australian sporting golden couple Lisa Curry-Kenny and Ironman champion turned Olympic kayaker Grant Kenny would tragically and prematurely be over for Jaimi Lee at 33.
Sage sports reporters might later claim they saw troubling early signs in Auckland in 1990 as the boisterous youngster ran around poolside, stealing the limelight from her famous mother, distracting and frustrating media and officials alike who were concerned the curious tiny Curry-Kenny double might fall into the pool during her mother’s immaculately executed “maternity comeback”, which had come five years after the swimming champ’s earlier retirement from the pool.
On day five of the Auckland games there came reports toddler Jaimi Lee – or Jaimi as she would later be known — had been “barred” from the pool deck during her mother’s races after provoking the ire of many during numerous poolside appearances branded by The Canberra Times a “disaster”.
As would become clear when veteran commentator Roy Masters waded in, focusing his attention on the toddler, who he labelled “hyperactive”, the unsuspecting little girl was destined for a life in the limelight, something that would soon be beyond her control and that of her parents due to a hype machine the likes of which had never before been seen in Australia.
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Having once powered a private industry comprising transport, property development, publishing, commentary and marketing concerns that at its height was put at $80 million — that hype machine would fall largely silent following the collapse of the Kenny marriage in 2009.
LONG-TERM BATTLE
On Monday, in that unfamiliar silence, 33-year-old Jaimi died after succumbing to what her family called “long-term illness”.
As a shocked nation searched for scant clues about Jaimi’s death, Curry posted to Instagram: “Our hearts are completely broken. Our beautiful daughter Jaimi has lost her battle with a long-term illness and passed away peacefully in hospital … with her loving family by her side. So loved. So beautiful. So kind to everyone … So painful. I can barely breathe.”
Jaimi’s brother Jett, a popular contestant on Ten’s Dancing With The Stars in 2019, revealed little more with his Instagram post on Tuesday: “I will love you forever,” he posted. “Rest in peace my beautiful big sister. The world lost one of its treasures yesterday but heaven gained one. You will be dearly missed by all whose lives you touched.”
Sister Morgan was equally reluctant to reveal any detail concerning Jaimi’s cause of death: “It still doesn’t feel real that you are not here … I love you so much and will forever miss you.”
Sources close to Curry, who reverted to her maiden name following her divorce from Kenny, believe she will open up about the illness and the mental health issues that plagued her eldest daughter in a future television interview.
While the mass media has spent the past four days reporting that it was an eating disorder that finally claimed Jaimi, insiders say that while malnutrition had certainly contributed to the young woman’s death, it was in fact alcoholism that robbed her of her youth, her vigour, her optimism and her life on September 14.
Reports of her battles with alcohol have been making headlines since 2014 when she was pulled over at the wheel of her car on the Sunshine Motorway at Mountain Creek one night in the week before Christmas after Queensland police observed her swerving between lanes on the road.
A breath test confirmed the then 27-year-old professional nanny was four times over the legal alcohol limit. A blood alcohol reading recorded 0.23.
Jaimi told police she had consumed 16 stubbies of Strongbow Cider beers that day, starting at 8.30am.
She admitted a long-term issue with alcohol and confirmed she had previously sought treatment for the illness.
Her lawyer told Maroochydore Court Jaimi had suffered anxiety since age 14 and drank to “self-medicate”.
Alcohol had become a “feature of her life”, lawyer Chelsea Emery told the court. Jaimi stated her issues with the bottle related to the breakdown of a relationship two years prior.
REBELLIOUS STREAK
Noosa sources last week claimed the anxiety Jaimi suffered at that time had been exacerbated by an incident involving an older man when she was a teenager.
Within the small Sunshine Coast surf community there are few secrets among a tribe of beach lovers whose children train together during daylight hours and drink together at night.
The people around her children, Curry would tell media in 1992 ahead of her Olympic comeback at Barcelona — her third Olympic Games campaign — had been hand-picked and were “healthy, positive people”.
“I don’t associate myself with negative people,” she said, squeezing in an interview between punishing morning and afternoon pool sessions, intense daily weight training sessions in the gym, writing two books and raising, at that point, two babies with Kenny who had, just weeks earlier, failed to qualify for the Australian kayak team headed to Barcelona.
He would go to Barcelona anyway to support his wife while the kids would remain at home in the care of their nanny.
The Kennys’ extraordinary high-octane marriage unravelled in the years prior to 2009 until one fateful night when a liberty was said to have been taken with young Jaimi during a ride home from a birthday party.
Jaimi was still in her teens and training to qualify for the national breaststroke team when an older male made an advance.
The incident — downplayed by Jaimi to her family at the time — rightly infuriated her mother, adding pressure to the Kennys’ already shaky marriage.
Always flighty, sources last week said the anxiety that plagued Jaimi had been evident in her from a young age.
Unlike siblings Jett and Morgan who took the family’s celebrity status in their stride, she had a rebellious streak. Her mother would tell friends Jaimi was a “headstrong” girl.
When her swimming career ambitions were not realised, Jaimi fell into work as a nanny.
A growing dependency on alcohol however would soon create issues.
In 2012, as a relationship ended, her father became involved with Melbourne radio personality Fifi Box, with whom he fathered daughter Beatrix “Trixie” Belle during a brief relationship.
Box soon became a friend and confidante to Jaimi, inviting the younger woman to relocate to Melbourne and to take care of her half-sister while single mother Box returned to the workforce.
It was hoped, sources said last week, the stint in Melbourne would be a positive disruption for Jaimi.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be and Jaimi’s alcoholism was soon creating problems in Melbourne.
Last week a grieving Box took time off from work at FoxFM to absorb the news of Jaimi’s death.
“The loss of such a beautiful loving sister and friend is suffocating. We laughed, we cried, we shared so many wonderful memories that I will keep alive for Trixie who loved her big sister so much, her little heart is broken,” Box posted to Instagram.
Contrite, Jaimi had returned to the Sunshine Coast to pick up the pieces of her life.
While his mother, a Queensland life coach, hoped the couple might be “soulmates”, others were concerned the relationship might not be positive for either.
In winter 2017, the recovering Jaimi’s life was up-ended anew when Crossley died in mysterious circumstances. The death, it was said last week, plunged Jaimi into new depression.
In the three years that followed, she would be in and out of hospital on the Sunshine Coast, receiving the blood transfusions she needed to extend her still young life.
The visits fuelled rumours she was battling an eating disorder.
Sadly, the iron transfusions could only prolong her life — not save her.
Jaimi Kenny died at Sunshine Coast University Hospital on Monday morning surrounded by her broken-hearted family.
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