Kadeena Cox

Kadeena Cox’s parents knew they had something special on their hands when she started riding a bike without stabilisers at the age of one.

Her mother, Jasmin Cox Williams, remembers: “Kadeena would scare me sometimes as she’d come full speed on her bike and I’d tell her to stop. She’d just smile at me and then brake.

“She was only tiny when she began riding a bike and had great balance, However, she also used to fall a lot and her knees would be cut and bruised. You would expect her not to want to get back on, but she would simply let me clean her knees up, then be straight back on the bike.”

A disposition to dust herself down and get on with it would serve Cox well in the years to come. The 33-year-old became known as para sport’s ultimate all-rounder – the first British Paralympian in a generation to strike gold in two sports at the same Games.

Cox captivated the nation with her juggling act across cycling and athletics at Rio 2016 but her sporting odyssey in fact began as a field hockey player at Wetherby High School. Cox - who was born to Jamaican immigrants - initially gravitated towards team sport before her hockey coach suggested she tried sprinting, such was her speed on the pitch. Throughout the twists and turns of her remarkable sporting life, the Yorkshire star has always been guided by having fun.

“As a young athlete I did everything because I just really enjoyed sport,” said Cox. “I’d encourage people to enjoy everything you can while you’re young and specialise when you’re older.

“There’s no point in doing a sport for the sake of fitness that you don’t enjoy, because you’ll easily fall off – you’ve got to enjoy it.”

In 2013, Cox joined Sale Harriers as a non-disabled sprinter and her world was turned upside down a year later. She suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a condition that can affect the brain and spinal cord, causing a wide range of potential symptoms, including problems with vision, arm or leg movement, sensation or balance.

“I was horrified that my life was going to be revolving around not being independent,” Cox said.

“I managed to use sport to give me a goal and give me something I could control, and it was kind of what allowed me to get over it in a relatively short period of time.

“The diagnosis has definitely changed the way that I think about things and my outlook. I think now more about living each day as it comes and taking every opportunity that's in front of me.

“You don't know when things are going to change, you don't know when your life's going to end, you don't know what's going to come as a challenge, so if you've got an opportunity, I always think take it while it's there, because you might not ever have the opportunity to do it again.”

The process of coming to terms with her disability led to a shift in her sporting role models too. Cox said: “My inspiration used to be an athlete called Allyson Felix, who is an American 400m runner. She runs so amazing and so graceful, and she's a lovely person.

“But then I became a Paralympic athlete and I'm surrounded by people that are doing amazing things every single day, these are the people that became my inspiration.

“When you're with people that have got everything against them and they've had so many setbacks but they still go on to push through things, they're the people that become your inspiration.”

After enduring a life-altering 2014, it didn’t take long for Cox to regroup and realign her goals, making the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. She was successful in her pursuit, earning a Paralympic berth in both track and field as well as track cycling and she went on to instantly set the world alight.

Cox captivated the masses by securing gold medals in both the C4-5 cycling time trial and the T38 400m sprint – etching her name in history as the first British Paralympian to win golds in multiple sports at the same Games since Isabel Barr in 1984.

She followed this up with two more cycling golds at Tokyo five years later, maintaining her status as one of the jewels in ParalympicsGB’s crown. Plenty of history was made in the Japanese capital with Cox’s fellow para-cyclist George Peasgood winning the 1000th medal for Great Britain & Northern Ireland since the start of National Lottery funding.

With her third Games on the horizon, Paris 2024 poses yet another opportunity for Cox to steal the headlines, acting as an inspiration and a trailblazer for many.

But as she looks ahead to this summer, Cox admits that due to her physical limitations, she can’t train as hard as she could in the past – especially when it comes to sprinting, the discipline she’s favoured since her teenage years.

“It is a balancing act,” she said. “I’ve got a great physio team and we just make sure that I’m staying in one piece. National Lottery funding and the system that supports has helped me keep my career going.

“I do still love athletics, it was always my first passion so I do lean towards that, but because of how my body breaks down I have been doing a bit more cycling because it’s low impact.

“I’ve been doing something called the Lever Movement to allow me to do non-weighted running which takes a large percentage off my body weight, so that’s helped. “It’s about being smarter and not training as hard as I used to.” Cox’s story is one that has resilience running through it like a stick of rock – as those closest to her can attest to.

“She never gave up,” said mum Jasmin. “What she was like as a tiny child on a bike is what she is like now. She gets straight back up.”

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