Kadeena Cox

Kadeena Cox was a promising able-bodied sprinter when, in 2014, she suffered a stroke that would change the course of her life. Later that year, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a condition that ended her able-bodied athletics career but redirected her toward para-sport, where she would go on to achieve one of the most remarkable dual-sport records in British Paralympic history.

Cox entered Para athletics in 2015, winning T37 100m gold at her first major international competition, the IPC Athletics World Championships. She then, almost as an experiment, took up track cycling as a form of rehabilitation — only eighteen months later setting a world record time in the 500m time trial at the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships.

At the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, Cox won three athletics medals — gold in the T38 400m, silver in the 4x100m relay and bronze in the 100m — before adding a cycling gold in the C4-5 500m time trial with a new world record. This made her the first British Paralympian in 32 years, since Isabel Barr's medals in shooting and athletics at Seoul 1988, to win medals in two different sports at the same Games. She carried the British flag at the Rio closing ceremony in recognition of the achievement.

Cox has continued to compete at the elite level across both disciplines, winning further gold medals and world records at the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Awarded an OBE for her services to sport, she remains one of the Paralympic movement's most versatile and celebrated athletes, and a prominent advocate for visibility around multiple sclerosis.