Despite a horrible season - especially a miserable performance at this summer's Commonwealth Games - and a succession of injuries, Bermuda's top triple jumper is not calling it quits yet.

On the contrary, Brian Wellman's ambition is to compete at the next Olympics and in at least two major meets next year.

"I've been frustrated knowing that I am a better athlete than my marks in the past year have demonstrated. My goal now is to make it to the 2004 Olympics and compete in an unprecedented fifth Olympic Games for Bermuda.

"My goal is always to be in the finals. You can't win a medal unless you're in the final and I always want to be in a place to make it happen," said the veteran athlete, speaking from his base in Arkansas, USA.

It will be a challenging climb back into international reckoning for the man who placed second in the hop-skip-jump event the 1995 outdoor World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden - when Englishman Jonathan Edwards broke the world record (18.29 metres) - and who captured gold at the indoor World Championships earlier that season in Barcelona, Spain.

Wellman's last showing of any note was gold at last year's Central American and Caribbean (CAC) athletics championships in Guatemala where he secured the podium's top spot with his first effort of 17.24 metres. Weeks later, he was sixth at the Edmonton World Championships in 16.81 metres.

"I've been competing but not competing well," he explained, adding that injuries including a pulled hamstring and an abdominal problem, which flared up at the Commonwealth Games, had compounded his woes.

Given his injuries, Wellman was "always behind the eight ball" in preparing for the Commonwealth Games, "doing more rehab than training". Still, knowing his capabilities, he opted to go to Manchester, England, believing he could pull off a few medal-contending jumps as happened last year.

"I was having similar problems with my jumping last year. Then I went to CAC Games and just put one jump together and that was it. I went to the Worlds and, technically, didn't jump as well as I would have liked but I still made the finals and was ranked 10th in the world at the end of season.

"This year again things weren't clicking going into Commonwealth but, knowing how far I had jumped before and that I had been there before, I felt I could put together a jump to medal. I mean 17.26 metres got the bronze medal which is about what I jumped last year at CAC."

However, there was no d?j? vu for the Bermudian who registered one legal mark of 15.84 metres in three jumps to finish eighth out of 12 competitors. He fouled his first and third attempts and declined his last three turns in the sandpit. This decision followed a bout of abdominal pains.

"I felt I had a few good jumps in me. My first one was probably my best jump which I fouled. Then I got a legal one and after that I felt I would have done more damage by continuing to jump.

"If I had continued I might have jumped a little further which wouldn't have gotten me among the medals. I might have ended sixth or seventh, maybe fifth at best. That wasn't worth the fact that I could have ended up doing some terminal damage.

"I think I might have had a pulled ab (abdominal muscle) or gotten a sports hernia. Right now I'm getting all that checked out," said Wellman who turned 35 on Sunday.

Having finished this season, he is looking forward to rejuvenating his athletics career next year at the events where he has reaped his best success thus far - the indoor and outdoor World Championships.