UPDATE: Belgian Paralympian Marieke Vervoort dies through Euthanasia after opting to end her life following long battle with Spinal Disease

Belgian Paralympian, Marieke Vervoort has ended her life through euthanasia at the age of 40.

This comes two years after she vowed to be euthanized after her long battle with an incurable degenerative spinal disease.

The former world champion wheelchair sprinter who won silver and gold at London 2012, and later competed at the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, suffered from constant pain, seizures and paralysis in her legs.

In 2017, she stunned the World she revealed she signed paperwork in 2008 that would allow a doctor to end her life in the future in her home country where assisted dying is legal.

A statement from Diest – where Vervoort was from, near Brussels – simply said she ‘responded to her choice on Tuesday evening’.

In an interview with Associated Press at the Paralympics in Rio, Vervoort described living with unbroken pain from an incurable, degenerative spinal disease.

According to her, some nights she could only sleep for 10 minutes.

‘It’s too hard for my body,’ Vervoort said in the 2016 interview. ‘Each training I’m suffering because of pain. Every race I train hard. Training and riding and doing competition are medicine for me. I push so hard – to push literally all my fear and everything away.’

In an interview with the Telegraph in 2017, Vervoort said from her hospital bed the pain had become too much, adding: ‘I don’t want to suffer any more.’

At that time, Marieke said she wanted white butterflies to be released from a red box when she died, as well as her ashes to be scattered in the sea off Lanzarote where she spent Christmases since 2008.

She continued: ‘It’s too hard for me now. I get more and more depressed. I never had these feelings before. I cry a lot.’