Paralympic gold medalist Sophie Christiansen has revealed she was left in tears after she was left stuck on a train.
Christiansen, who has cerebral palsy and has to use a wheelchair, was attempting to travel from London to Godalming, Surrey, on Wednesday when she tried to get off the train.
But when the doors opened there was no guard on the platform with a ramp to help her off - leaving her unable to leave.
Thankfully a kind passenger spotted the incident and held the doors open to delay the train until a ramp was provided, otherwise she could have been stuck for another hour, when the service was due to terminate at Portsmouth.
"This is what happened when I got back last night after @SW_Help said they told the guard I was on the train," Christiansen wrote on Twitter , alongside a video of the episode.
"I went home and I cried. It finally hit me that society is just not going to change to make services truly accessible. I will have to accept discrimination all my life."
Christiansen, 31, has won eight gold medals across three Paralympic Games representing Team GB in Equestrian, along with a silver and bronze medal.
She picked up golds in Beijing, London and Rio for freestyle, championship dressage in 2012 and 2018, along with various team events across the three Games - which all helped her awarded an MBE, OBE and CBE.
But depsite her sporting prowess, Christiansen has explained how "one in ten" journeys leave her stranded - and has called on the government to legislate for better disabled access on the rail network.
"It's always the general public helping me; I don't know what I'd do without them," she said.
"Without the help I probably would've ended up in Portsmouth at the end of the line because there is no real way for me to block the door to stop the train from moving.
"I literally don't know what it will take for the rail in this country to make the service more accessible.
"There should be a different system to allow me to be independent".
SWR apologised for the incident in a tweet saying: "I am very sorry to see you had trouble leaving the train last night. I can see the message was sent out to assist you as soon as you contacted us, I can only apologise and guess this was not received or seen by my colleagues."
They added to the BBC, that they are "investigating the incident as a priority' and are "reviewing the process to make sure this doesn't happen again."
