What was looking like a nightmare has turned into the wonderful fulfilment of a cherished dream for Katura Horton-Perinchief.

Realising an almost life-long ambition of competing at the Olympics has come at the 11th hour but the young Bermudian diver is eagerly anticipating the biggest splash of her life.

“It's a dream come true. I've had this dream since I started diving at seven years old. I couldn't think of anything better,” she declared, now hurriedly back in training in the USA after receiving the nod for the Summer Games via e-mail last weekend.

Katura, who was in Bermuda for Cup Match when she learnt of her last-minute good fortune, will represent the Island in the three-metre springboard event after persistent petitioning from her mother Ellen Kate Horton urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and FINA (diving's world-governing body) to fill all 34 berths for that discipline. This allowed her daughter, who was on the reserve list, to be awarded a place in the competition proper.

“I'm ecstatic, so ecstatic. We (my mum and I) found out together. An e-mail came in and we were sitting there together and we jumped up for like an hour,” recalled Katura, speaking to The Royal Gazette from Texas yesterday.

“We were so excited and it's a major relief because the waiting was really bad. It was awful.”

Explaining how she eventually got into the Olympics, the college graduate said 32 of the 34 diving spots for women were allocated and the remaining two were going to be left empty. Her mother saw that as a last chance.

“Diving is in danger of being eliminated from a lot of meets like the Commonwealth and Pan Am Games. The thinking is if we can't fill up spaces then why not eliminate it.

“So she (her mother) wrote letters expressing concern that diving is in jeopardy of being eliminated and how does it look if we can't even fill up 34 spots.

“They (officials) went down the list and looked at everybody who had qualified and then slotted in the next top two qualifiers.”

Believed to be the first black female diver in Olympic history, the 21-year-old has endured a see-saw turn of events in her diving career this year.

Katura initially thought she had qualified for the springboard speciality by placing 34th at the Diving World Cup in February. However, her joy was quickly transformed to despair as some new regulations - favouring synchronised (synchro) divers - seemed set to rob her from participating in the world's greatest sporting showpiece.

The confusion surrounded the IOC's decision to limit the number of divers at the Olympics to 136 overall. FINA determined this quota would be split equally between men and women (68 each) and thereafter that would be divided equally between the platform and springboard events (34 each) sections.

In the springboard category, preference was given to synchro and some individual divers had to wait to be slotted into the remaining spots. Katura was on the reserve list and barely failed to make the grade.

Just when all seemed lost, however, she was thrown a lifeline thanks to her mum's valiant efforts.

“She has been there since I started diving and when I had given up - at home just sitting around not diving - she was writing letters and on the phone really pushing for this,” said the diver, paying tribute to her mother who will be accredited as her manager in Athens.

“This is as much her accomplishment as it is mine and I definitely could not have done it without her. She is definitely my pillar.”

The uncertainty, though, has thrown off Katura's training and will likely hamper her performance as she must now refocus on diving and not her next mission which is medical school.

“I haven't been training all along. I took a month off before I went to Bermuda because we thought that it (chance of going to the Olympics) was over. “Then I found out it might not be over so I came back and started training again. I trained for about two weeks and then went back to Bermuda on July 21 and I was in Bermuda until Sunday.

“I've only been in the pool twice since I found out so, no, I'm not going to be in tip-top shape but, at this point, I'm just excited to be going and I'm going to do my best.

“The actual competition is not until August 25 so I have a good amount of time to practise while I'm in Athens but I would not have taken a month off from diving if I had known I was going to the Olympics,” she said.

Still this 15-year veteran of the pool knows it requires more than skill to prevail in her pursuit and expects to rise to the occasion despite lacking her usual sharpness.

“Diving is very much a mental game and mentally I'm ready for the competition. Place-wise, I'm not looking to get into the final or anything like that. I'm just going to try and compete to the best of my ability, especially with such short notice.”

Apart from the obvious pride she feels in wearing Bermuda's colours at the Games, Katura noted that being among the world's elite in her field will prove invaluable in her future.

“I'm going there to compete of course but it's definitely moreso for the experience. Diving is a sport where you're not done at 18. It's not like gymnastics. This will be a learning experience and hopefully I will be better prepared to do well at the 2008 Olympics.

“But right now I'm going to dive, have fun and enjoy the experience.”