Last August 13 swimmer Kiera Aitken booked a place in the Olympics with a terrific performance at the Pan-Am Games.

Next month - exactly a year later - she comes face-to-face with destiny as the Summer Games open in Athens, Greece, where this backstroke specialist will be among the first Bermudians in action on August 15.

The optimistic 20-year-old is hoping 12 months of diligent training at her base in Halifax, Canada, plus stints elsewhere will pay off with a good showing in her 100-metre event.

She has accepted that, despite her best efforts, she is unlikely to be a medal contender but would be ecstatic to go under her national record of one minute 4.98 seconds,which was also the time with which she qualified.

“To get into the semi-finals I would have to have a really awesome swim. It's possible but it's kind of a long shot. I would be happy to get into the low 1:04s,” said Aitken, currently on a brief break in Bermuda.

“I'm pretty close to it already this season. I swam 1:05.25 at the Jamaica meet and 1:05.40 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they would have both qualified me as well.”

Clocking these times right now is a positive sign for the Bermudian who expects that, once rested, she will fare even better.

“I feel really confident in my 100. I've had no rest and I've been swimming around the same time that I did when I qualified so I think when I am rested and ready then I'll swim a lot faster than that.”

Her confidence would have been boosted by sterling results at the recent Caribbean swimming championships in Jamaica where she copped two golds and one silver. There, she recorded her second-best time in the 100 backstroke and a couple personal bests in other events.

Aitken returns to Halifax soon to continue training and will compete in one more meet before heading to Italy for a final training camp prior to the Games

“I've really been working on my stroke technique, endurance, speed and power. I've gone through the hardest phase of my training. Now it's just about working on technique,” she noted.