Alia Atkinson collecting her award for her nomination for 2010 Sportswoman of the year.
Outstanding national swimmer Alia Atkinson says the upcoming 2011 season will be crucial to her preparation for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Atkinson enjoyed an outstanding 2010 season in which she won four gold medals at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Puerto Rico, three of which were in record times.
Atkinson, who became Jamaica's first finalist at the World Short Course Swimming Championship in Dubai, outlined her major objective for 2011.
"I want to increase my standings. Right now I’m tenth in the world in the short course but I’m a little bit lower in the long course, so I want to decrease that and reach in the top eight in time for the Olympics," she said.
Atkinson was runner up the 2010 Sportswoman of the Year Award behind Veronica Campbell-Brown at the recent 2010 RJR Sports Foundation Awards.
She described the award as the highest honour she has received in her relatively short career.
"This is the first major award that I got outside of swimming, so it’s unbelievable to even imagine that I was even nominated for it much less place runner up. I didn’t think my performance at the world swimming champs was good but I guess other people felt it was higher, so to make runner up was amazing," she said.
Atkinson recently graduated from Texas A & M University with a degree in child psychology.
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