A huge crowd attended her funeral at Ballinamallard Methodist Church.

The 31-year-old athlete was found under the flyover on the main Bangor to Belfast road two weeks after she threatened to take her own life at the same place.

Rev Ken Lindsay said at her funeral she had been "bubbly, generous, lively, hardworking, dedicated, caring, sensitive, charming, bright-eyed, inspirational, fiercely independent, determined to the point of being stubborn, and always putting others before herself".

He told mourners: "Karen had mental illness and try as she might, and I believe she did try hard, she couldn't cope."

Rev Lindsay said she had been surrounded by highly devoted family and friends.

"So many things were in place, but illness is illness and there are times when nothing helps," he said.

Cromie had been a member of the British wheelchair basketball team and had won silver medals at the 2005 and 2006 Paralympic World Cups.

She later joined the rowing squad having learned the sport on Lough Erne.

Local Ulster Unionist Councillor Raymond Farrell said the entire community was pulling together to support the Cromie family as they come to terms with her death.

"It's been an awful blow to the family," he said.

"Ballinamallard is a small village.

"There is a great sense of shock and numbness.

"People are really lost for words.

"There is a sense of raw emotion out there.

"I knew Karen myself. She was a lovely person – a really bright personality, a warm person.

"Everything she did, whether it be her schooling or whatever she did, she gave it a 100 per cent.

"That came out by the fact that she did so well at the Paralympics. It is all the more shocking what happened," said Farrell.

"Everybody is really lost for words.

"I know everyone's thoughts are with them and we pray for God's help for them in the coming days," he said.

Northern Ireland Sports Minister Nelson McCausland has passed on his condolences to the family and friends of Cromie.



"Karen was a talented athlete who competed at an international level in the World Rowing Championships and also in the Paralympic Games in Beijing," he said.

"We are all proud to have known such a sporting talent.

"I appreciate that this is a very difficult time for all the family and friends and my thoughts are with you."

Ulster Unionist Councillor in Co Fermanagh Bertie Kerr, who lives in Ballinamallard and knows the Cromie family well, said he was devastated by her death.

"She was a lovely girl - a beautiful looking girl," he said.

"Then she had that accident.

"It hasn't been easy for her.

"She came from the very best of a home with wonderful parents.

"We are absolutely devastated."

Following the Beijing Games, Cromie transferred nationality to join Rowing Ireland's new adaptive rowing programme and competed at World Championship level for Ireland.

She was a key team member in the squad vying to become the first ever Irish rowing team to compete at a Paralympic Games in London next year.

Kevin O'Neill, the director of Disability Sports NI said: "Karen was a lovely, bubbly person who was a pleasure to know.

"Because of her sporting achievements both in wheelchair basketball and adaptive rowing and because she had competed for both GB and Ireland, she was a well-known and popular member of the disability sports community.

"The news of Karen's tragic death has shocked and saddened the whole disability sports community throughout the UK and Ireland.

'Karen was also a member of the Sports Institute for Northern Ireland and represented a new generation of talented and highly successful disabled sports people from Northern Ireland, to be recognised by broader society as elite sports people in their own right."

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January 2011: British Paralympic rower dies in tragic circumstances