Masterchef winner Kadeena Cox on her journey to Paralympic gold medal success

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Paralympic gold medallist and Masterchef winner Kadeena Cox MBE suffered a stroke at the age of 23 before being diagnosed with MS – but she didn’t let that get in the way of becoming the star she is today

Masterchef winner and paralympic gold medallist Kadeena Cox has had quite the journey.

At 25 she became the first British Paralympian to win gold medals in multiple sports at the same games since 1984.

In Rio, Kadeena won gold in the women’s cycling time trial, gold in the 400m sprint and bronze in the 100m sprint.

Five years later, she returned to the Tokyo games in 2021 to represent Great Britain, where she successfully defended her gold in track cycling.

However, her path to success was anything from smooth.

Speaking on the Prevayl: Better Begins Here podcast Kadeena, now 30, revealed she suffered a stroke at 23 before being diagnosed with MS.

She said: “In 2014, I was training for the 400m, and then I had a stroke in the May.

“I spent like three, four months recovering from that. I was 23 year old, I’d had a stroke, which, you know, I thought, okay, this is bad, but I can recover from this.”

During her worst moments Kadeena said she couldn’t even butter her own toast.

“Opening bowls, cutting stuff was difficult. I just stabbed my fork (into food) because I just didn’t have the movement,” she revealed.

However, after making a recovery, Kadeen revealed she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis – a lifelong condition that affects the brain and nerves.

She explained: “So when I was diagnosed with MS, I realised this is going to impact me for the rest of my life.

“My condition can change. Like at any point, I could become severely disabled or, it could just constantly get worse.”

Kadeena said one of the questions her mum first asked the doctor was whether he daughter could still run.

Kadeena said: “The consultant was like, ‘you know, that there’s still potential. It depends on how the disease moves forward, but I think she’ll be able to.'”

Two days after her diagnosis Kadeena set up a fundraiser to ‘get her back into sport”.

“Then I had was something positive (to aim for),” she explained. “I am very goal driven person.”

Back to cooking and after several weeks of tough competition, it was finally announced that the talented star had been crowned the winner of BBC’s Celebrity MasterChef.

Cooking up a storm she beat fellow finalists Megan McKenna and Joe Swash.

Kadeena said: I went into master final I had my race day lipstick on. I was focused on the on job and I think you could see it. When they were filming, I was so focused, I didn’t even want to talk to anyone.”

However in her podcast the athlete revealed she’d always had a difficult relationship with food.

She said: “Disordered eating became a big part of my life (after the stroke). I went from being an elite athlete prior to becoming ill, to be doing nothing, being on steroids, and my mother feeding me.

“I think I put on three stone in less than two months.”

On confronting her demons she said: “In 2019, after I’d won the world championships and I was just mentally in a horrendous place. I was broken.

“I blurted all my struggles to someone who was interviewing me and it was weird because that’s how everyone around me found out about the struggles I was facing.”

Kadeena admitted that the 2020 Paralympics she would check her weight “20 times a day.”

“I had my food scale so I could weigh everything out. If I did feel like I’d eaten too much, I’d gained too much weight. I just wouldn’t eat for like a day or two,” she said.

Now, however, Kadeena is on a new path and despite her difficult journey – it doesn’t look like the superstar will be slowing down anytime soon.