Gold star Grace Reid faces anxious wait

Grace Reid competing in the Women's 3m Springboard final atthe British Diving Championships. Picture: Tony Marshall/Getty

In February she was involved in the test event in Brazil, last month she won two medals at the European Championships, and, at the weekend, she claimed gold in the three- metre individual event at the British Championships in Sheffield.

All of which has done her claims for a place in Team GB for the Olympics no harm at all, but she will not find out her fate until Friday when the  diving team is announced.

The 20-year-old, of Edinburgh Diving Club, said: “I cannot put into words how much going to an Olympics would mean to me. It is everything I think about and everything I daydream of and it has really been on my mind for  the last four years since  London.

“However, it is not in my hands and I have done all I can do, so we will just have to keep our fingers crossed over the next few days and wait and see. It will be a nervous wait, that’s for sure.

“The experience in Rio earlier in the year at the test event was amazing and I think just being around that level of  athletes showed me where I needed to be.

“From getting to that event to the time out there, I took something away from each stage of the journey and I feel I have built on things from there. For me, it has been important to take something from every event I have competed in whether it be a club competition or a world competition as you have to keep learning all of the time.”

Reid, who works at the Commonwealth Pool with coach Jen Leeming and fellow diver James Heatly, who won two medals in Sheffield, believes her mental strength has really improved in the last six months.

That belief was shown on Sunday at the British Championships when she dusted herself down from a poor dive in the preliminariess to go on and win gold a few hours later.

She said: “In the morning heading into the event, I felt really good, but I had an absolute nightmare with one of my dives and I was in a pretty emotional place. I really had to try and regroup and pick myself up for the final and I managed to do that, and it showed me that if you can hold it together mentally then it does a lot of the work for you and you can go on and achieve good results.”

Reid, who has competed in two Commonwealth Games, the first in Delhi in 2010, says that she feels amazing after her most recent triumph under the spotlight.

“It doesn’t feel real and I think I’m a little bit in a  daydream, but I am so happy,” she said.

“I feel amazing after winning that British title.

“The biggest thing that has kicked in this year is my  mental attitude. The ability comes and goes, but I think turning up to every event as if it is a training session just seems to work.

“There were so many strong girls in the final on Sunday and it is such a tough field that you’ve just got to focus on yourself because everyone is capable of doing amazing things, but if you focus on yourself the results take care of  themselves.

“Another major thing for me over the last few months has been confidence, really.

“My mindset certainly helped me to come away with the result at the weekend and I am really pleased with it.”