SINCE last summer Bermuda’s leading female swimmer, Kiera Aitken, has based herself in Barcelona, Spain training at the Club de Natacion for this year’s Pan American Games in Brazil . . . and then hopefully for a spot on the 2008 Olympic team.Aitken, who flew to Melbourne, Australia in March this year to compete at the FINA World Championships, was back in Bermuda this week for a short break before heading back to Barcelona on Saturday.

Of this year’s Worlds in Melbourne, she said: “I competed in the 50, 100 and 200 backstroke and 50 free.”

And although she said her results were “just OK” Bermuda’s leading swimmer on the international stage is hoping for better things when she competes in Rio de Janeiro in July at the Pan Am Games.

“I am hoping to qualify for the (2008) Olympics as well,” she said.

Aitken swam for Bermuda last year — also in Melbourne, Australia — at the Commonwealth Games and in 2004 she made her Olympic debut in Athens.

Next week it will be back in the pool at the huge sports and swimming club on the beach of Sant Sebasti|0xe0| in Barcelona which has an 25 x 50 metres outdoor pool as well as a smaller indoor pool.

In fact Aitken had been to Barcelona before when she competed at the World Swimming Championships in 2003.

In Rio this summer Aitken plans to compete in her two favourite events — the 100 and 200 metres backstroke and is hoping that she will be allowed to swim in the 50 metres freestyle.

“I went to Barcelona last July after I had finished at Dalhousie,” she said. “For the first couple of months I was learning Spanish and for the last few months I have been training and travelling a bit.

“I was in Barcelona in 2003 at Worlds and I really loved it. It is a big swimming city — there are a lot of pools and a lot of teams. But their swimmers are not that big on the international stage which is surprising when you consider how good their programmes are. They don’t have a lot of top international swimmers.”

And although she jumped into Spanish lessons immediately after arriving, she came up against another language problem. She said: “Living there all the time helps me to speak Spanish but in Barcelona they also speak Catalan which I haven’t learned. All the practises and stuff at the club are in Catalan but they do speak to me in Spanish.”Training full time can be tiring but as Aitken points out: “When I was at Dalhousie I was studying and training — this is a bit easier and the weather is also better (than Halifax)!”

Before flying the flag for Bermuda at this summer’s Pan Am Games, Aitken will return to Bermuda for the National Championships and then go to Canada for a meet and also get in some last minute training in Halifax with her Dalhousie college coach David Fry.

“He will also be coming to coach in Rio,” she said of Fry who accompanied Aitken to both the Commonwealth Games last year in Melbourne and to the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

“I am looking forward to the Pan Am Games this summer and I will also be trying to qualify for the Olympics there as well.”

At the Pan Am Games Aitken will definitely be competing in the 100 and 200 backstroke but she would also like to try the 50 freestyle as well “depending of what is needed to qualify”.

Of her time spent in Barcelona since last July she said: “After college I wanted to try something different and Barcelona is an amazing city to live in.”

While she has improved on her 200 metres time, she hasn’t yet on her 100 metres time.

“But I will by the time the Pan Am Games come around — I will definitely improve,” she said confidently.

And although Barcelona is football mad, the Bermudian hasn’t yet gone to see the like Ronaldinho and Messi at the famed Camp Nou.

“I haven’t been to a football game yet — I’m not really a fan,” she said.

In Melbourne in March at the FINA World Championships Aitken didn’t swim in the pool where she performed so well last year at the Commonwealth Games.

“The Commonwealth Games pool was outside while they used a new indoor pool for the Worlds. It was a great pool — a lot of world records were set in it.”

Last year in Melbourne Aitken swam a sub-30-second in the 50-metres backstroke race for the first time and broke her own national record twice en route to Bermuda’s first-ever appearance by a female swimmer in a Commonwealth Games final.

Aitken recorded 29.99 seconds for her semi-final swim where she placed third in her heat and qualified for the event final. At the time Aitken called her semi-final showing the “swim of my life”. Moving on to the final, Aitken ousted former 200-metre backstroke world champion, Katy Sexton, of England to finish seventh.

In 2004 at the Olympics Aitken finished 31st in the 100-metre backstroke and she also competed at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England where her top finish was 14th in the 50-metre backstroke.

In Athens in 2004 Aitken won her Olympic heat in the 100 metres and in doing so set a national record of one minute, 04.37 seconds. That performance, along with winning two gold medals at the Caribbean Swim Championships in Jamaica that year led to her being named Bermuda’s Female Athlete of the Year.