'It changes lives': the sporting event for organ transplant recipients

Behind every medal at the British Transplant Games is a story of survival and generosity. Athletes are competing not just for themselves, but in honour of the donors who gave them a second chance at life

Behind every medal at the British Transplant Games is a story of survival and generosity. Athletes are competing not just for themselves, but in honour of the donors who gave them a second chance at life

When Jenny Glithero looked down at her bandaged torso, she didn’t recognise herself. The last thing she remembered was turning off the TV. Now, the doctor at her bedside was telling her she’d received an emergency liver transplant.

Glithero couldn’t understand what she was hearing: that she’d contracted a viral infection and experienced acute liver failure. “I couldn’t move, I was so weak,” Glithero recalls. “There was nothing left on me. There was no muscle … no fat.”

It’s impossible to reconcile that image with the woman I see before me, windswept and rosy-cheeked from a 25-mile bike ride and still wearing her cycling kit. When I meet her, she’s training for the British Transplant Games, a national sporting event for organ transplant recipients.

Before her transplant, Glithero would cycle 20 miles to and from work each day and then do repeats of London’s Highgate Hill at the weekend “for fun”. While still in hospital recovering from the operation, a doctor told her about the transplant games and she decided to compete.

After being on a ventilator, Glithero had to re-learn how to breathe before she could even start walking again. But six months later, she was back on the bike. “I went down the road for the frst time without falling off,” she says. “I was like: ‘I’m doing it! Oh my gosh, I’m doing it!’ and that was the beginning of training.”

For Glithero, competing is a way of honouring the anonymous donor who saved her life. Standing over the kitchen stove making tea, she pauses for a moment and rests her hand across her upper abdomen, where she is scarred from the transplant operation. “I am so grateful for this liver,” she says, “for this life that was gifted to me.”

A 'service of remembrance' at the World Transplant Games 2025. Image: WTG2025/YesVideography

More than 8,000 people are currently awaiting a lifesaving organ donation in the UK. This is despite England introducing in 2020 an opt-out law, under which all adults are considered potential donors after death unless they have stated otherwise.

“At the end of the day it’s the family that can refuse to give consent at the bedside,” says Transplant Team GB manager Lynne Holt, who has been involved with the British version of the games since shortly after they were established in 1978 by the charity Transplant Sport.

Holt explains that there is a distinct lack of awareness around the importance of organ donation that means people often fail to discuss with their families before they die whether or not they want to donate their organs.