SHE WON SILVER AND BRONZE MEDAL AT THE OLYMPICS IN BRAZIL NOW SHE HAS SIGNED THE PAPERS TO GET HER KILLED.

Her name is Marieke Vervoort.

Go to a restaurant in this pretty Belgian town, and all the diners know her. They come over to congratulate her on winning two medals at the 2016 Rio Paralympics; she raises a glass to a family celebrating a birthday.

For a few hours, she's the life and soul of the party.

But, at 37, the Belgian wheelchair racer suffers such pain she wakes her neighbours by screaming in the night. As she watches her precious, fiercely defended independence dwindling, she has planned her own death.

Euthanasia is legal in Belgium, and eight years ago Vervoort signed the papers which will, eventually, allow a doctor to end her life. It's not that she wants to die. She wants to live. But she wants to live on her terms

She was just 14 when the diagnosis was made and gradually her life became "a constant battle".

In spite of it, she achieved a distinguished career in wheelchair racing, winning 100m gold and 200m silver in the 2012 London Olympics, and now a silver medal in Rio.

But the punishing training schedule is proving too hard. This was her last Paralympics, she confirmed, making her Rio achievement bitter-sweet.

"It's a feeling of 'Yes, I won a silver medal'", she told the BBC. "But there is also another side to the medal, the side of suffering and of saying goodbye to the sport. Because I love the sport, sport is my life."

The possibility of euthanasia gave her the courage to keep going as long as she has, she says, adding that euthanasia must not be characterised as "murder."

"It gives a feeling of rest to people," she says. "I know when it's enough for me, I have those papers."