Ben Cohen’s ex-wife Abby has revealed the rugby star’s heartless response to finding out she was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Following his split from Kristina Rihanoff this month, Abby spoke to MailOnline to finally have her say following their marriage breakdown.

Ben left Abby, with whom he shares 17-year-old twins Harriette and Isabelle, for Kristina after meeting on Strictly and falling victim to the show’s infamous curse. 

But Ben had little words of compᴀssion for Abby after hearing she was fighting the disease, despite a 13-year relationship together.

Abby was given the all clear for bowel cancer after undergoing treatment in 2023.

Since successfully fighting colon cancer, Abby has since found purpose in using her platform to spread awareness about the need for early reporting of bowel issues.

Ben Cohen’s ex-wife Abby has revealed the rugby star’s heartless response to finding out she was diagnosed with colon cancer 

The ex-England rugby star, 46, left Abby for Russian dancer Kristina Rihanoff in 2013 after their stint on Strictly Come Dancing (pictured in 2014)

‘It’s the one up side of this “celebrity” thing,’ she said.

When asked if her cancer improved relations with Ben, she said he didn’t reach out to help ‘at all’.

‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘There was maybe one text message.’

Elsewhere in the interview, Abby admitted she has to be careful about how she voices her opinions surrounding Ben and Kristina’s split, given that her priority has to be the protection of her daughters, ‘who are my life’.

They worship their father. ‘He is their hero,’ she says, in that way of the ex who can never publicly contradict that image. Though she does pity his current predicament, having lost everything.

‘I’m sad for Ben,’ she admits. ‘I do feel sorry for him. Our marriage broke down and it’s happening all over again to him, and he’s got another child.

‘He’s got to start again from nothing, in his late forties. He’s going from being so successful as a rugby player to [people] now reading of his business failures.’

She doesn’t want to rub salt in the wounds, she says: ‘I don’t want to make him look more stupid than he already does.’ And yet she asks the question so many are asking.

Abby pictured in hospital with 17-year-old twins Harriette and Isabelle

But Ben had little words of compᴀssion for Abby after hearing she was fighting the disease, despite a 13-year relationship together

Abby was given the all clear for bowel cancer after undergoing treatment in 2023

Read MoreEXCLUSIVE Abby Cohen breaks silence to finally have her say after her ex and his Strictly dance partner split

‘It’s come full circle now that they have split. It reminds me of all the hurt I went through. Was it really worth it? I don’t know.’

There is anger there, about the fact that her daughters are ‘having to go through it again, losing their home, and this time they have a sister too’.

They are ‘older and more resilient’ now, but ‘they’ve still got to go through more change, having already done it once’.

It’s striking that she does not join the rush to kick the man when he is down. She says that she believes in karma, though. ‘I have read people commenting on this, saying: ‘The wife will be happy about that, it’s karma.’ I think that what goes around, comes around, doesn’t it?’

Is she sad for Kristina too, who sobbed in court, clearly devastated at about how things have turned out? It’s another ‘no comment’ there.

And asked if she is surprised that the relationship is over, though, Abby shakes her head.

‘To be successful and have longevity, relationships have to be built on strong foundations. How they met is not, in my opinion, a solid enough foundation because it is all about lust. It’s a physical thing. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to me like an organic thing.’

Abby starts to cry when she talks about how her relationship with Ben – which began when she was 16 and he was 17 – began: ‘Looking back, we were children, but we were best friends. He was my hero too, my protector.’

When asked if her cancer improved relations with Ben, she said he didn’t reach out to help ‘at all’. ‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘There was maybe one text message’

Elsewhere in the interview, Abby admitted she has to be careful about how she voices her opinions surrounding Ben and Kristina’s split, given that her priority has to be the protection of her daughters, ‘who are my life’

‘I’m sad for Ben,’ she admits. ‘I do feel sorry for him. Our marriage broke down and it’s happening all over again to him, and he’s got another child’

They married in 2003, and had their twins five years later. Family life was, she thought, everything.

‘Ben was just a homeboy,’ she says. ‘He just did his job well in sport and he came home and mowed the grᴀss. He was probably quite boring, to be honest. He was down to earth.’

Then he, in her eyes anyway, ran off with a woman who seemed to

be everything Abby was not. She physically shudders when she talks about Kristina, even when she is trying so hard ‘not to be the bitter ex wife’.

‘We are total opposites,’ she says. ‘I’m a homemaker. I’m a family girl. I make stews and Sunday dinners. I don’t know if Kristina does that, but I don’t think so.

‘Me and Kristina are completely different. We look completely different. We like different things. She doesn’t have any wellies, put it that way. She doesn’t pick dog mess off the floor like I have to do every day.’

Actually, of the two it is suddenly Abby who seems to have the more lovely, and together, life, notwithstanding the trauma of the past decade. 

Her career gives Abby purpose these days. She ‘started again’, as a pH๏τographer, entirely self-taught. 

The ex-England rugby star and Strictly pro’s relationship was the product of the show’s infamous curse when he left his then-wife of 13 years for the Russian pro (pictured 2023)

And she has fallen in love with new partner David, ‘who is very private’. ‘It took a while, because I was completely broken, but in a way what happened was the making of me, because it forced me to work out who I was.’

She manages a laugh when she says that her ex simply wouldn’t recognise her as the same quiet mouse he was married to. ‘Ben wouldn’t know me,’ she says. ‘I’m a completely different person.’ Stronger? ‘Yes. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

Abby’s views about Strictly have not mellowed. How she hates that show. Every year, while the rest of the country gets excited about a new series, she shudders.

‘I don’t like the show. There is such sadness attached to it because [when Ben went on it] I was married, and then I wasn’t. When I hear the music it kind of gives me PTSD, to be honest.’

Most people think that Strictly is still about escapism and loveliness. But Abby says: ‘I wish it was still a show like that but it isn’t. It’s not about dancing any more; it’s about ‘who is going to go off with who this year’.’