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9th September 2011 - SkySports.com

I got into swimming at a club when I was eight years old. All my friends were going to swimming lessons and I felt a bit left out.

So I did it because everyone else was doing it and it was the sociable thing to do. I just wanted to spend some more time in the evening with my friends.

I'm just a very competitive person. I just wanted to compete and wanted to race and do well and swim fast. It all snowballed from there. I started racing when I was nine or 10. Every time I got in the pool I wanted to win.

I'd like to quality for the 50m and 100m Freestyle and the 100m Butterfly. To qualify for all three would be perfect.

It is funny because when I look back on it now, all those years ago, it just seems like yesterday because it has gone so fast and all happened so quickly - becoming a member of the national team and then thinking: 'hey, I could actually go to an Olympics'.

And then making an Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and now we have a home Olympics where, hopefully, I will be in with a shout of a medal, which would be fantastic.

I've got my targets for London. I'd like to qualify for the 50m and the 100m freestyle and the 100m butterfly. I am going to swim all those at the trials and if I qualify for all three that would be the perfect meet for me.

He swam awfully in the heats then managed to beat Michael Phelps in the semi-finals!

I'm going to be involved in the relays too, which makes five events for me in total. And, you think, there are heats, semis and finals in pretty much all of them so I could end up with 13 swims in eight days. So I will be a busy girl!

We're hoping to provide come Olympic memories for Britain - I always remember Stephen Parry in Athens. I was 14 when the Athens Olympics were on. He is scouser - he trained in Liverpool like I did.

He swam awfully in the heats of the 200m butterfly and only just qualified for the semis. And then managed to beat Michael Phelps in the semi-finals of Michael Phelps' main event!

He went on to get a bronze medal in the final. That, for me, was really inspirational - that a guy from Liverpool who trained with my coach could make an Olympic team and won a medal.

When I was 14 I was thinking: 'that's what I want to do, I want to be like Stephen'.

READ FRAN'S BLOG IN FULL ON THE SKYSPORTS WEBSITE BY CLICKING HERE

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