SPOTTING a picture of herself on The Argus front page alongside 16 other Sussex Olympic hopefuls, Heather Olver had to pinch herself.

Posting a picture of the newspaper online, the Team GB badminton player told Twitter followers 'I cannot believe this is real, that's me!'

Since then the 30-year-old has packed her bags and headed off for Brazil in search of medal glory.

Yesterday the former Heathfield Community College student battled the Malaysian pair in her first match in the women's doubles with team mate Lauren Smith.

A self-confessed addict of nut butter, she is tucking into jars of the stuff in Rio de Janeiro during her training and lives by the motto "work hard and be nice to people. No doubt she is missing one of her biggest supporters, her black Labrador Pip and her family back home.

The University of Bath graduate in coach education and sports development became a professional badminton player and is now based in Milton Keynes.

But her talent for the sport blossomed in Sussex. She was born in Eastbourne and grew up in Heathfield where she showed promise at school in the triple jump and as a 200 metre sprinter. Then she was trained by coach Bruce Peapell at the Waldron Junior Badminton Club nearby which is said to have ignited her Olympic dream.

As early as aged six she was set on competing and well into a training regime, but an injury saw her wheelchair bound for several months.

It never held her back, in 2005 she won the women's doubles at both the England Junior Championships and the Welsh International. In 2009 she was successful four times internationally, followed by a bronze medal at the European Championships in women's doubles in 2010. The 2014 Commonwealth Games saw her pick up a silver medal in the mixed team contest.

Earlier this season she spent time coaching youngsters following in her footsteps across clubs in the East Sussex Junior Badminton Association. This followed her matches in the German Bundesliga contest where she was ranked number four in the Ladies Doubles and number two in Mixed Doubles.

The association has celebrated her success so far by making her the patron for the year.

She was competing as Eastbourne tennis player Johanna Konta went into the first round of the mixed doubles with Andy Murray's brother Jamie and the second round of the women's doubles with Heather Watson against the Chinese Taipei team. This comes in the week when Konta revealed her weekly food diary, full of healthy and energy-packed dishes full of fruit and vegetables like bananas, spinach and kale.

Meanwhile Sussex players in the Great British Rugby sevens team were going head to head against South Africa in the semi-finals.