From Trinidad to Alloa via Hungary & Buckingham Palace
It is going to be quite the week for Gabriella Wood.
First thing on Monday, she flies to London to be at Buckingham Palace as Trinidad and Tobago's representative in the first leg of the King's Baton Relay.
That night, the 27-year-old judoka returns to Scotland and will be back coaching kids at Judo Club Esprit in Alloa the next day.
Then the week will conclude with Wood hoping to complete a hat-trick of British University Championship successes in Birmingham in the +78 kg division.
"It's going to be some week. I'm just going to try and enjoy it all," she says.
The events at Buckingham Palace start the official countdown to the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, which begins in 500 days.
Each of the 74 competing nations will have their own version of the baton, with University of Stirling student Wood invited to represent her Caribbean homeland.
"It is definitely not something I thought I'd be doing in my lifetime," adds Wood, who admits to still being a little in the dark about what her relay duties will involve.
"I'm just going to turn up, be given a baton, then walk around and see what happens.
"I thought it was going to be a dress code, but they said there's tracksuits we'll wear for the day, so that makes my life easy. I hope I get to keep it as a souvenir."
Having the tracksuit is one thing, but what Wood really covets is a Commonwealth Games medal.
After first taking up judo in primary school and quickly making her name in the sport, she stopped in Edinburgh to visit family on the way home from a training camp in Hungary in late 2020 - and never left.
Wood moved to Alloa, earned a place studying sport in Stirling, and developed a love of steak pie, all while becoming Trinidad and Tobago's first female Olympic Games judoka in Tokyo.
She finished fifth at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022 after coming through the repechage - losing to Scotland's double gold medallist Sarah Adlington in the opening round - but is determined to improve upon that in 2026.
"A medal is definitely the target in Glasgow," says Wood, who narrowly missed out on the Paris Olympics last summer. "Fifth place gutted me. Me, my training partner, my coach - we couldn't even talk to each other.
"The kids at the club pretty much every week ask 'are you going to fight in Glasgow, I want to come and see you'.
"So a medal this time would be huge, in front of the kids and the judo community that I've been part of for so long. That would make it just that bit more special."
