A Scottish woman who crowdfunded £10,000 to pay for her own leg to be amputated after a decade of chronic pain is set to make history at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Hope Gordon, 31, will become the first athlete to compete at a Summer Paralympics, Winter Paralympics and Commonwealth Games across three different sports when she takes on the parapowerlifting for Team Scotland next week.
The former Paralympian has switched sports to seize the opportunity to compete for Team Scotland in front of a home crowd.
She said: “As soon as I saw the Commonwealth Games coming back to Scotland, I knew I had to be there – especially with the closing ceremony falling on the anniversary of my operation. I knew not trying would be a regret.
“I want to show myself, and everybody else, that going through with it was the right thing for me – nobody knows your own body as well as you do.”
Ms Gordon said the moment has taken on added meaning as the closing ceremony on August 2 falls exactly 10 years after her life-changing operation.
Ms Gordon, who grew up in Rogart in the Highlands, was just 12 when she began experiencing knee pain during her first year of secondary school.
Initially dismissed as growing pains, the condition worsened to the point where she struggled to walk and relied on friends to get around school, as well as using crutches and a wheelchair.
She was eventually diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a rare, incurable condition causing severe, long-term nerve pain.
The condition left Ms Gordon in near-constant pain throughout her teenage years.
At its worst, she described the pain “as like having barbed wire dragged across your leg, but the wire was also on fire”.
She said: “I was scared to go to shops, as anything or anybody touching my skin was unbearably painful – even the wind against my skin would hurt. I was basically a zombie for 10 years.”
Despite years of treatment, her condition did not improve, and at 14 she began to consider amputation, later telling her parents she wanted the procedure at 16.
Because amputation fell outside NHS guidelines for CRPS, Gordon sought private treatment, raising £10,000 through crowdfunding after finding a surgeon in England.
Support came from friends, family and strangers, allowing her to go ahead with the operation in August 2016, aged 21.
“For the first time in 10 years, the pain was gone,” she said.
“It felt like I could breathe again. I’d taken so much medication over the years, and I found myself only needing paracetamol.”
Following the operation, Ms Gordon returned to sport through swimming.
She transitioned to paracanoeing in 2018, making her international debut within a year and establishing herself as one of the sport’s leading athletes.
Competing internationally for Great Britain, she won medals on the World Cup circuit and at major championships, and went on to compete at the Paris 2024 Paralympics.
She then switched to Nordic skiing, representing ParalympicsGB at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.
Now she is preparing for a new challenge in parapowerlifting at the upcoming Commonwealth Games.
“To be part of that, especially with a home crowd behind you, is something really special,” she said.
“Obviously, I want to compete, but it’s also about showing young girls that being strong is cool, and teaching children that people are different, regardless of what that looks like.
“It’s about showing people that everyone is different, but that’s not something to be scared of. If my story can help even one person, then that’s a good job done.”
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