But in Rio, 2016, her battle with the shocking pain of progressive tetraplegia propelled her into the international spotlight, as it was revealed she had signed euthanasia papers in Belgium.
As the Telegraph puts it, the illness has since "advanced with pitiless cruelty".
There are constant sleepless nights, lapses in and out of consciousness, and the interviewer witnesses Vervoort's "curdling screams" as injections are administered. She can no longer eat properly, throwing up everything except pudding. The paralysis is up to her breasts, and pain medication hardly works anymore.
Belgium has the most advanced euthanasia laws in the world and she is well past the point where three doctors agree that the pain is intolerable and incurable.
Vervoort says: "If there is a God, it must be a bad guy to punish me this way".
"Now even my eyesight is disappearing. An optician saw me and rated one eye two out of 10, and the other just one. He said there was nothing he could do, because the problem was coming from my brain."
"Then a neurologist stayed with me the whole night while I had one spasm after another. She said it wasn't an epileptic seizure but just the body screaming, I'm in so much pain. I'm done."
Vervoort is described as having been an active teenager who liked basketball, triathlons and deep-sea diving.
Early signs of the illness appeared as inflections in Vervoort's Achilles, leaving her on crutches. Her legs then stopped working - she was "being physically destroyed from the bottom up".
Marieke Vervoort of Belgium poses with her gold medal after the women's 100m T52 final during the Evening Session on Day Five of the IPC Athletics World Championships. Photo / Getty
Specialists believe the paralysis stems from a deformation between the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae but can't understand why the resulting pain is so bad.
Now a once supple girl needs her nine-year-old labrador Zenn to return dropped items, and sound the alert when she loses consciousness. Zenn even opens and close doors for a woman who won the 2012 Olympic gold medal in the T52 100m, and set a European record in claiming the 200m silver medal.
"Everybody sees me joyful, winning medals, being strong, but they don't see the other side," Vervoort says.
"That is why every Paralympian is, to me, a champion."
"Nobody knows this, but three days before my first race in Brazil I was in hospital, because I was being sick constantly and dehydrating. I was so angry, and yet I came second. I suppose when you are mad, you are a lot tougher than normal."
It was her last race.
Deciding the time to pass on is difficult. Knowing there is the lethal injection option has, Vervoort says, prevented her from committing suicide.
She has written to everyone close to her, and would like white butterflies released from a red box when she passes. Her parents will not be beside when Dr Wim Distelmans enables her final release. Her hospital psychologist will.
Her father Jos, a retired tax law professor, says: "Very painful...it is better that she does this with other people."
