PARALYMPIAN’S PAIN BATTLE OVER.
Marieke Vervoort, who has died by euthanasia aged 40, was a Belgian athlete who became one of the faces of the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, winning gold in the 100 metre T52 wheelchair class; she became the focus of worldwide attention four years later, before the Rio Games, after revealing that she’d already decided to end her life when she could no longer endure the pain caused by the degenerative spinal condition from which she suffered.
With her shock of blonde hair, fearlessly frank ways and vocal competitive spirit, the “Beast from Diest” scored a major upset in 2012 by becoming the wheelchair sprint champion in a European record time of 19.68 seconds.
A year later, however, Vervoort suffered a serious shoulder injury and was told by a doctor that she’d never return to her previous level. Characteristically, this only spurred her to exceed it.
Having overseen her rehabilitation herself, she went on to set three world records, and in 2015, at the world championships in Doha, she won the 100, 200 and 400 m titles in her class.
In 2014 she suffered an accident, spent four months in hospital and began to contemplate euthanasia. This is legal in Belgium if three doctors deem quality of life to be intolerable.
At the Rio Paralympics, Vervoort won her second silver medal, in the T51/52 400 m and bronze in the 100 m.
Vervoort was born in Diest, eastern Belgium, on May 10, 1979 to Odette and Jos, a professor of tax law. She was a sporty child who enjoyed diving and ju-jitsu and had early ambitions to become a phys-ed teacher.
When she was 14, however, she began to suffer repeated infections in her Achilles tendon. At first, this left her able only to walk on tiptoe, but soon she had to use crutches and it became apparent that the disease was moving up her body.
Doctors diagnosed a rare and incurable deformity between her fifth and sixth vertebrae which would cause progressive tetraplegia. Less well understood was the accompanying reflex sympathetic dystrophy which caused Marieke long bouts of pain. Sport offered an outlet.
In recent years her vision and finger function deteriorated and she gave up racing after paralysis reached her chest in 2017; she took up indoor skydiving instead.
She had published a memoir, in Flemish, and cooperated on a forthcoming film about her decision to end her life, Death and the Racer.