Southend's Olympic hopeful Karen Smith carved herself a slice of success when she competed in Grand Prix events in Canada and Mexico.

The 23-year-old made the finals of the South American event and achieved personal bests in both countries.

The World Grand Prix circuit consists of ten events around the globe where competitors can attain Olympic qualifying standard - something which Karen achieved in the highboard and springboard sections.

Karen's main objectives were to gain further experience for the big European Championship event in July and she trained with the Canadian team while in Montreal.

After quickly settling in with her new "team-mates" Karen had nothing but praise for the divers who may one day become her Olympic rivals.

She said: "There was such a good team spirit surrounding the Canadians. They have excellent training facilities and have a group of superb divers.

"Almost all of their team are ranked in the top ten in the world and it was great fun and an unforgettable experience to train with them."

The training benefited Karen as she went on to score a personal best on both the ten-metre platform and the three-metre springboard,

With a field of world-class divers competing, Karen was delighted with her performance - especially after making the Olympic qualifying grade.

She then spent a further week training with the Canadians before travelling to Mexico with them to join the British team.

In her favourite event, the ten-metre platform, Karen carried on where she left off with yet another personal best score and terrific performance that just qualified her for only her second-ever final at this level.

Karen found the pressure tough saying: "I looked at the competitors around me on the parade of finalists immediately before our event and nearly freaked out - there were World medallists, European medallists and me!

"In the competition I followed one of the top Chinese divers and her scores were incredible and difficult to match."

Karen confessed that being in such illustrious company didn't help her nerves: "I felt over-hyped and nervous and didn't handle the pressure as well as I did in the preliminaries.

"The pressure told on my final score but I managed to move up one place and finished 11th out of 12 finalists, but with 35 divers in the initial rounds I was pleased - if a little angry that I didn't hold it together."

On her return, Karen's coach at Southend, Bill Clark, said: "I am really proud of her, she achieved her targets with personal bests on both boards and made a world class final.

"I'm convinced the experience was invaluable and she will be competing in two more Grand Prix very soon - Edinburgh and Madrid - aiming to be sharp for the European Championships in July."

High flier - Karen shows the sort of form which brought her success in the Grand Prix events

(Right) Grand Prix success - Karen Smith boosted her Olympic dream with solid performances in Canada and Mexico

Pictures: STEPHEN LLOYD

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.