BBC Strictly star Montell Douglas thought she might die after being rushed to hospital in agony

Former Olympic sprinter and bobsledder Montell Douglas is the last sportsperson standing in this year's Strictly Come Dancing and is now hoping to make it through to another week.

The 38-year-old is one of the nine remaining contestants on the BBC show, after Olympic swimmer Tom Dean, former Arsenal and England footballer Paul Merson and hockey star Sam Quek were all eliminated to leave her flying the flag for the sporting world.

If she can go all the way, Douglas would become the first female athlete to win the show in its history. No sportsperson has lifted the famous glitterball since gymnast Louis Smith in 2012, with cricketers Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash also doing so in 2005 and 2006.

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Douglas is no stranger to making history, however, as two years ago she became the first British woman to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. After taking part in the 100m sprint and 4x100m relay in Beijing in 2008 - setting a British record of 11.05 seconds in the former - she took up bobsleigh in 2016 and made it to the 2022 Winter Games, which were also held in the Chinese capital.

Since then, she has taken on the role as Fire in the BBC's reboot of Gladiators, with fans of the show now cheering her on alongside professional partner Johannes Radebe on Strictly.

All of Douglas' achievements are made all the more remarkable by the serious health challenges she has faced over the years, with severe period pains having a huge impact on life and even seeing her rushed to hospital in pain.

Earlier this year, she explained how the "excruciating" pain left her "convulsing and passing out multiple times" in what she has described as a "really traumatic" and "very scary" incident back in 2021. The ordeal was so bad that she was not sure if she was going to live through it as she was taken to hospital.

“I don’t know why that day in particular was worse than others, but it was horrendous," she told the Daily Express. "I was at home on my own in ­excruciating pain. I took a painkiller and it didn’t kick in, so I took another and again it didn’t kick in.

“I ended up profusely sweating, having dizzy spells, passing out – I blacked out quite a few times. I rang my partner at the time, I rang my mum because I was very scared. I rang an ambulance to come and get me and I was hospitalised. The nurse just looked at me and said, ‘you must be in absolute agony’."

Douglas added: "It was almost like the trauma of the pain had sent my body into shock. It was a very scary time for me. I literally at one point I was messaging my mum saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it, it’s just so bad’. I was convulsing and passing out multiple times. I didn’t know if I was going to wake up again, just from the pain.

“My body couldn’t regulate its temperature and I became dehydrated, which probably made things worse. It sounds so unbelievable when you tell people that you were unconscious just because you had period pains.”

Appearing on Good Morning Britain earlier this year, she described that incident as a "wake-up call" and, after undergoing a a contraceptive implant procedure to help alleviate her period pain, Douglas has now partnered with Bupa to raise awareness about the condition.

"I'm going to be really honest about it as I think it's something we really need to talk about more the agonising pain," she said. "Not many people and not all women will experience the same thing.

"It can be really defeating, there have been times in my sporting career and also being doubled over with pain, lying doubled over in pain in bed, or if I've made it to the track to train I'm just lying on the floor. The waves are so intense, not only are you focusing on what you're trying to do, which is always high level, it's very distracting.

"Often, I can't actually do the task I'm meant to do so I can't do a duel, I can't run, the pain of doing my sport is bad enough without having to think about that and challenge that."