Bermudian Olympic hopeful Roy-Allan Burch will be rubbing shoulders with other potential Olympic swimmers in the 41st version of the Santa Clara International Invitational in California.

Burch will be striving to qualify for the Olympics in his specialty, the 50 metre freestyle, today. The event started yesterday.

To be successful, he needs to clip six tenths of a second off of his personal best of 23.77 seconds.

The top seed in the event is the former world champion, Fred Bousquet of France.

Tomorrow Burch will swim the 100m freestyle and attempt to make the FINA Olympic "B" qualifying time of 50.95 seconds.

In a field of over 100 swimmers, the top eight will all be trying to tackle the two lap event in 49 seconds or faster.

The two top seeds Michael Phelps and Roland Schoeman are tied at 48.41 seconds in qualifying.

A quick glance at the heat sheets of the meet reads like a who's who of swimming as the best swimmers in the world are all gathered there.

With esteemed names such as Michael Phelps, Aaron Piersol, Ryan Lochte and Kate Ziegler of the United States, as well as a strong South African contingent and others from around the globe, the event has an explosive cast of talent.

There are enough current world champions to ensure that this will be a very fast meet.

The Santa Clara swim meet is widely regarded as one of the best in the world and it takes on a particular significance in this Olympic year, as an important bench mark prior to the main event this August in Beijing.

The only other meet, which will surpass this one in terms of speed and intensity, will be the US Olympic trials themselves, to be held in Omaha, Nebraska at the end of June.