Golden target for Shropshire swimming star Freya Anderson

The 21-year-old begins what is set to be a busy Games for her with the 200m freestyle heats on the opening day of aquatics competition.

And she believes she can produce the performances to add gold to her two Commonwealth bronze medals from the Gold Coast four years ago.

“I am more confident now, definitely,” she says. “I’ve had a very good block of training, from January onwards.

“Some of the times I was doing in training in March and April I was surprising myself.

“Hopefully now I can transfer that to the race pool.”

The medals have followed since those bronzes in a pair of relay events on the Gold Coast in 2018.

She has brought home prizes from the European and World Championships – as well as gold from the Tokyo Olympics last year after swimming in the heats of the 4x100m mixed replay for Great Britain.

Representing England this time, Anderson holds entries in the 100m and 400m freestyle events, as well as a host of relays, so is expecting a gruelling few days of competition.

“It is going to be a busy week,” she said. “I’m entered for the 400m, as things stand, but that is on the last day, so we will see how things go. At the moment it is a bit up in the air.

“There are a lot relays, roughly one a day. But it is not certain I will swim all of them. One of the good things is there are no heats for the women’s relays, so that will at least give me a chance to ease the workload.”

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