Model athlete Louise aiming for glory at London Olympics

Whether she is taking on the world's best athletes at the Olympics or doing a photo shoot for a men's magazine, Louise Hazel takes it all in her stride.

The 26-year-old heptathlete from Birmingham has recently appeared on the Jonathan Ross Show and has also done fashion shoots with Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.

Click on the image on the right to see more pictures of Louise.

She also trains twice a day, six days a week, at the Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr, where she is a member of the Birchfield Harriers. Her biggest success to date has been winning a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

The glamour of being a world class athlete is a far cry from her upbringing as her family have always lived above their pub, The Station Hotel in March, Cambridgeshire, and Louise's first job was keeping the bar area clean and tidy.

"You get to meet a lot of characters in a pub so it gave me a lot of life experience and I think I grew up quite quickly," she says.

"A lot of people find leaving home for the first time quite daunting but I enjoyed my time at Birmingham University studying French and felt like everyone else was young in comparison."

Louise started going to her local track when she was 10-years-old and realised that her talent lay in sprinting.

She was soon running regional and school competitions and then found herself competing at a national level.

"On the wall of my PE room at school there was a picture of Denise Lewis, but I was a typical teenager and had posters of Peter Andre on my bedroom wall at home," she says.

"When I was winning national titles I realised I was following in the footsteps of some of our greatest Olympians and that was when I knew I wanted to be an Olympic athlete." Louise's father Peter died in 2008 after a heart attack and two strokes. He was in hospital for six weeks before he died.

"In the same year my father died I lost my Lottery funding meaning I couldn't go to the Olympics in Beijing," she says.

"I was also in my final year at university – it was a really hard time but I knew my dad would have wanted me to keep going and aim for the Olympics. My dad would have been really excited about the games as he was my biggest fan."

As far as relationships go, Louise says: "At the moment I'm keeping my head down and focusing on the Olympics so I haven't got time. However, I might re-think that if Peter Andre is still single."