Bermuda will compete in swimming and gymnastics at the upcoming Commonwealth Youth Games in Australia.

Three athletes will represent the Island in each discipline in the November 29 to December 4 spectacle being held in Bendigo.

Flora Duffy, Anastasia Lau and Trevor Johnston will take to the pool while Casey Lopes, Kalena Astwood and Kristin Heyliger strut their stuff on the parallel bars, rings and other gymnastic apparatus. The latter will compete both individually and as a team while their swimming counterparts will each contest four events.

Duffy races in the 50, 100, 200 and 400-metres freestyle while Lau is entered in the 50-metres freestyle as well as the 50, 100 and 200-metres breaststroke. Johnston, who will carry Bermuda?s flag in the Opening Ceremony, swims in the 50-metres butterfly and the 100, 200 and 400-metres freestyle.

Richard Lau is travelling with the swimming contingent as coach while Maria Duffy is team manager. They leave next Wednesday and the gymnasts a day later.

?We?re going to have three days in Melbourne to acclimatise and get used to a 50-metre pool and then we travel up to Bendigo for the Games,? explained Maria Duffy.

This is only the second Youth Commonwealth Games, the first having been held in Edinburgh, Scotland, four years ago ahead of the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England.

More than a thousand under-18 athletes from 24 countries are expected to vie for medals in ten sports ? athletics, badminton, boxing, cycling, gymnastics, lawn bowls, rugby sevens, swimming, ten-pin bowling and weightlifting.

For many, it will be their first international multi-sport event.

The host city, Bendigo, is 90 minutes north of Melbourne which will hold the Commonwealth Games proper in March, 2006.