Meet the Paralympian who plans to win gold then take her own life straight after the Rio Games

A Paralympic athlete who plans to win gold in Rio is considering ending her life after the Games due to an agonising spinal disease that leaves her unable to sleep. Marieke Vervoot, 37, a
Belgian athlete, suffers from an incurable spinal degenerative disease that has left her confined to a wheelchair.

But despite the condition she has become one of the world's leading Paralympians, winning gold in the 100m sprint and silver in 200m in the T52 class at the London Paralympics in 2012.

And now she is hoping to repeat that success when the Rio event starts on Wednesday, which she has already ruled will be her last Paralympics.

However, her health problems have been progressively deteriorating, and have now reached a point, where Vervoot says she will now consider enuthanasia.

And after the Games in Rio, she will head back to her native Belgium to weigh up her options after deciding that ending her life could be the only choice left.

She told the Daily Express: 'I have a bucket list, including stunt flying, and I have started thinking about euthanasia.'

Vervoot's health problems began in 2000 when she was struck down by the rare disease, which paralysed her.

To aid her recovery, she started playing wheelchair basketball before builiding up to triathlon and competing in th 2007 Hawaii Ironman.

However, by 2008, Vervoot's condition deteriorated, meaning she was unable to take part in triathlon and instead moved on to wheelchair sprinting.

It is thought that she constantly suffers sleepless nights and the pain caused by her condition often means she faints regularly, which has led her to conisder her options.

She told French newspaper Le Parisien: 'Everybody sees me laugh with my gold medal, but no one sees the dark side.

'I suffer greatly, sometimes sleeping only ten minutes a night - and still go for the gold. Rio is my last wish.'

Everyday Vervoort is tormented with pain, and she records her agony in her diary, with this entry from Sunday, July 17 just one example of what she goes through.

Fortunately I had a better night even though I had a moment of crisis for about 45 minutes.

'With me this morning, it felt like I had slept only an hour, but that was not the case,' she wrote.

'My body is just exhausted from all that... I let the nurse this morning give me a shot of morphine and this morning went purely on character to the training. I literally knocked all my fears and frustrations out of me.'

Euthanasia was legalised in Belgium in 2002, and can take place with the written consent of three doctors.

It was the second country in the world to legalise euthanasia after Holland liberalised the law a year earlier

It is estimated that five people a day in Belgium die with the assistance of doctors, ranging from those with terminal illness to others with chronic, but not life threatening ailments.- Daily Mail