Leeds Paralympic gold medal winner Kadeena Cox given OBE

Leeds paralympic gold medal athlete Kadeena Cox has been praised by the King at a Windsor Castle honours ceremony.

Cox, 31, who won two golds for Great Britain at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, was given her OBE for services to athletics and cycling from Charles at the investiture event.

It was Charles's first major investiture since becoming King in September. He held a smaller investiture at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in October.

Kadeena said she was especially excited to be given her award from the King after recently missing an opportunity to see him at Buckingham Palace while on holiday.

She said:

"It was really exciting, I was hoping I would get to have King Charles just because I was meant to see him at Buckingham Palace the other day with all the other Olympians and Paralympians and I accidentally forgot and was on holiday so I was gutted.

"So to have him today to give me my OBE was really special because the last time I saw him he was still Prince Charles.

"He said to me 'There's no ends to your talents, you seem to do everything'."

Cox said they talked about cycling and what speeds she can reach, telling Charles she has "only crashed once and it was probably my fault".

On her upcoming sporting goals, she added:

"So we're two years away from the next Paralympics.

"I didn't quite achieve what I wanted to achieve in Tokyo, so I'm really training hard to be able to dominate in Paris and hopefully retire from athletics at that point, but next year I've got two world championships which are two weeks apart so it's going to be a real challenge.

"I've got this idea in my head that I want to do the winter Paralympics in '26 and try snowboarding, so yeah, that's my next thing on the agenda."

Cox added:

"I haven't tried it yet but it's on my agenda. I saw (British snowboarder) Aimee Fuller the other day - she said she'd give me a lesson in snowboarding."