Paralysed, Paralympic gold, a cancer diagnosis – now Jo Butterfield’s going for Winter Paralympic glory

Hands wrapped around a cup of tea, Jo Butterfield is smiling. Always. No matter what the world throws at her, which has been, even she admits, a lot.

She details it all with a smile on her face. About how she walked into an operating theatre 15 years ago to have a spinal tumour removed and woke as a statistical anomaly – one of 0.01% of people paralysed from the chest down as a result of the surgery. How she won club throw gold at her debut Paralympic Games in 2016, then discovered on social media that her athletics career was over – the discipline had been abruptly removed from the Paralympic programme for Paris 2024. How she then pivoted to wheelchair curling, making the podium at her first World Championships, in 2023, only to be diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer a fortnight later.

And how, through it all, she laughed her way back, again and again, until this week she finds herself aiming to become the first British person to win summer and winter Paralympic gold medals.

“I spoke to a sports psychologist, and one of the quotes that came out was: ‘Refused to see any negative in any situation,’” Butterfield, 46, tells The Observer.

“I probably only reflect on things in a humorous way. I was a bit like: ‘Was there not an unwritten rule that somebody in a wheelchair can’t get cancer?’ That should be an unwritten rule, shouldn’t it? But apparently it’s not.

“And my middle name, Shuni, means fortunate – I’m not sure where my mum and dad got that one from.

“I sound stupid, I know I do, but the way I rationalise things is there’s something in me that’s OK. I know I’ve been through a spinal cord injury that’s pretty high level and traumatic, but my life is great. I love my life. So I tried to take my cancer diagnosis with that.

“I’d rather it be me because I know I’m OK. If I can take it off somebody else who wouldn’t be able to deal with it then, actually, I’m all right with that. I can take that.

“I am very optimistic, but I’m not stupid. I know the world isn’t always pretty and I know I’ve been pretty unfortunate, but I’ve also had a lot of amazing things happen in my life. And I’m in a really good place.

“I choose to see the good side of things because it makes me feel better. It’s pretty selfish really.”

The way Butterfield sees it, the positive experiences she has savoured would never have happened without the negative ones that preceded them.

Her old friends still laugh at the reality of her life as a professional sportswoman. Although she was physically active in her previous career as a civil servant with the Ministry of Defence, sport had only ever been a pastime, never contested at competitive level. That all changed in 2011 following the fateful spinal surgery.

“There wasn’t an alternative,” she says, of the operation. “It had to be done. But I woke up and couldn’t move from the chest down, so it was a bit of a shocker. I didn’t even realise anything was wrong until all the nurses and doctors were round the end of the bed.

“To be honest, from the start I was pretty OK with it. I was very matter of fact that there’s not a lot I could change, so let’s get on and make the best of it.”

The unlikely path to elite sport started with rehabilitation. As a tetraplegic, Butterfield has no use of her legs, limited mobility in her arms and minimal grip in her hands. Wheelchair rugby was the natural starting point, and she helped set up Scotland’s only club, based in Glasgow, where she has lived since relocating from Yorkshire for university in the 1990s.

After applying for a UK Sport talent programme in early 2014, she was invited to British Athletics’ Loughborough base to try various throwing disciplines. “I can remember sending the form off thinking I was a bit old, a bit past it, it’s not really for me,” she says.

After her first discus effort went further than the previous Paralympic gold medal-winning throw, Butterfield soon became a funded athlete. Club throw glory at Rio 2016 followed, and she finished fourth at Tokyo 2020 after a difficult build-up when she was forced to shield due to the Covid pandemic.

Then came the news that her event had been cut from the Paris 2024 programme.

“It was everything that I did – my career, my life – gone in an instant,” she says. “It’s suddenly finding out you’ve been made redundant and you pretty much have no purpose. Club throw is not something you do recreationally. And if it’s not in the Paralympic programme, there’s no funding, no backing.”

Living 30 miles from the sport’s Stirling headquarters, wheelchair curling had long been a thought lodged at the back of Butterfield’s mind. She threw her first stone in autumn 2022 and was part of the Scottish bronze medal-winning team at the World Championships six months later. A fortnight after that, she found a lump in her breast.

When it was quickly confirmed as cancer, she was sent for a full-body scan to see if it had spread.

“That was the hardest time,” she says. “The spinal injury was massively life changing. It affects every single thing that I do every day. It’s not always that much fun, but at no point did I ever think it was life ending. This very much was potentially life ending.

“People that knew would say stuff like: ‘You’re strong, you can fight anything.’ And all I was thinking was: ‘Yeah, but if there’s no fight to be had then there’s not a lot I can do with that.’”

She was training on ice when she took the call to confirm the cancer was localised. There followed a 20-week intensive chemotherapy course, followed by surgery, radiotherapy and immunotherapy. In typical Butterfield fashion, she continued training – but not competing – as best she could throughout, naming the lump “Larry the lodger” until it was “evicted”.

Selected for Milano Cortina in Britain’s mixed doubles team with Jason Kean, she has been publicly setting gold as the target. “It’s me that’s put it out there,” she says. “It’s a brand new event, so it’s a very open field. Dare to dream.”

After the unexpected news of club throw’s return for the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic programme means Butterfield intends to combine summer and winter sporting endeavours over the next few years, simultaneously tackling athletics and wheelchair curling.

“I never dreamed of being a Paralympian because it was never in my world,” she says. “So now coming up to my third Paralympics is pretty epic.

“I hope all it does is spur people on to say yes to an opportunity. Push that door and see where it takes you.

“I remember sitting in that hospital bed thinking: What next? I pushed the doors when people said to try things, and I hope seeing me there is enough to show people the future’s bright.”

It is an extraordinary position to find herself in. That is why she keeps on smiling.

Photography by Murdo MacLeod