HOME AND AWAY CHLOE MAGEE Seán Kennyhears how badminton player Chloe Magee's decision to move to Sweden has worked

JONKOPING? Ah, there it is: Grid F8, south central Sweden. Home, apparently, of the Husqvarna lawnmower. How did Donegal native and Olympic qualifier Chloe Magee find herself moving there as a promising 17-year-old badminton player two years ago?

"It was just after I'd finished my Leaving Cert. My coach in Ireland set me up with this coach in Sweden, Tom Reidy, who's been to the Olympics and who had coached a girl who was in the top five singles players in the world, so he's really, really good."

Reidy, originally from Limerick, had married a Swedish woman and settled in Jonkoping. And so Magee was Scandanavia-bound, hoping to further the sporting education that began in her hometown of Raphoe. Such has been her progress under Reidy that she has developed from budding junior to Olympic qualifier.

Back, though, to Raphoe and where it all began. Her father Sammy Magee is a badminton man to his core. His love for the sport came down the family line, inherited as surely as eye or hair colour by his eight children.

"I started playing from when I was four or five. My dad kind of built up our local club in Raphoe. He got lots of people in to play. I just always went along with him. He's mad about badminton, absolutely loves it.

"I was brought up with it. My whole family's always played. My brothers were very good and my sister was good, so I wanted to be good as well."

The club remains based in the local church hall. It was rudimentary enough, although it only seems that way to her in retrospect. It is a little rough-edged when compared to the arenas she is accustomed to as a full-time player.

But growing up in Raphoe, Her father was a constant encouraging presence. "He coached me and brought me on. Because I lived in Donegal, I didn't go to any tournaments until I was nearly 16. But I'd play with my brothers, which was what made me good, because they were stronger."

By 16, she was winning national titles at senior level. Translating her potential to the international stage was going to mean moving abroad. "I didn't want to go to college yet; I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I decided to give badminton one year, give it a shot and see how far I could go. And then, because I had a chance to qualify for the Olympics, I went for it for another year."

Landing in Sweden was no small upheaval: new language, new culture. And, perhaps most of all, a new approach to badminton, unparalleled in intensity by anything she had experienced. There were rough days early on, but she reminded herself that there was a reason for all this.

"The Olympics was my goal. Otherwise, I'd definitely have given up. There were some days and some patches when I did not want to play badminton at all. But I kept looking towards this one thing."

How big an influence has Reidy been? "Tom's been crucial for me. He's helped me in more things than badminton. He's been there for me through times when I was losing in the first round of tournaments all the time. He was always there, picking me up again.

"And he's improved my game so much. He knew exactly how to get me from being a junior player to being able to compete with senior players and that was a big step for me. Coming from Ireland, where I'd never really trained full-time before, when I went over to Sweden everything was hard for me: the running, the weights, all these things I'd never really done before. He really made me a lot harder."

Life in Jonkoping eased with time. "I really like life in Sweden. Socially it was really good, because some of the friends I had made it really easy to go out. Even though it was Swedish-speaking, they really helped me a lot."

The pace of her development has been gratifyingly swift. "In Europe, people tend to start winning in their late twenties, so to qualify when you're 19 is something that never really happens."

She competes in China as an outsider, with a world singles ranking of 69. Nonetheless, her achievement in qualifying betokens her potential. As does her recent performance in the US Open, where she was a narrowly beaten in the first major final of her singles career.

She will consider her post-Olympics options with an eye fixed on London 2012. "I think I might do two years of half-training, half-studying and then in the last two years just go full out for London, really push hard. I'll be a lot older and a lot better then."