IT may come as something of a surprise that a professional swimmer is not entirely confident of their ability to swim in a straight line. But Kathleen Dawson admits that one of her major concerns for the upcoming Commonwealth Games is whether or not she will manage to finish the race in the same lane she started out in.

Dawson’s specialist stroke is the backstroke but when she’s swimming in an indoor pool, as she almost always does, she has the lines on the ceiling to follow to ensure that she doesn’t stray too far from the centre of her lane.

However, the 2018 Commonwealth Games, which kick off in less than three months in Gold Coast, will be held in an outdoor pool and despite the fact that Dawson has swum thousands upon thousands of lengths in her lifetime, she remains somewhat concerned about losing her bearings. “The biggest worry is whether I’m going to swim in a straight line and whether I will end in the same lane I started in,” she said. “I have to get used to that but hopefully the training camps will help with that.

“The plan is still to go out and race the way I always do. I don’t think I race too badly in an open air pool - I go to Santa Colombie in Italy and that is an open air pool so I should be ok. I’m hoping anyway...”

The 20 year-old will travel to Australia as part of Team Scotland’s 21-strong swimming squad and as long as Dawson doesn’t lose her bearings too drastically, she will be one of the team’s best medal hopes.

Despite her youth, Gold Coast will be Dawson’s second Commonwealth Games and when she looks back to Glasgow 2014, where she was the youngest member of the Scottish swimming team, she admits that the Games were something of an intimidating prospect. “I was quite young in Glasgow and it was my first ever senior Games,” she recalls.

“You stay in a camp together but the swimming was at Tollcross and I had been swimming there for years so it didn’t really feel all that different. The lay out of it all and the level of competition was different though and that made me feel nervous but I took all that on the chin and just tried to make the most of it.”

Dawson ultimately finished in fifth place in the final of the 50m backstroke in Glasgow – an admirable performance for a 16 year-old – but in the intervening four years, she has become a much-improved athlete.

2016 was Dawson’s real breakthrough year, winning an individual bronze medal in the 100m backstroke at the European Championships, as well as being a part of the relay team that won gold in the 4 x 100m medley. At those European Championships, she also became the first Scottish woman ever to dip under the one minute mark fin the 100m backstroke.

These impressive results, as well as a much improved personal best time over the past few years, mean that Dawson goes into Gold Coast 2018 with far higher expectations than she had upon her shoulders in Glasgow.

The University of Stirling swimmer will, however, have her work cut out to grab a spot on the podium as the gold medal favourite is the new world record holder, Kylie Masse from Canada, who set the new world best mark at last summer’s World Championship final, in which Dawson finished eighth.

“I can’t wait to get out to Gold Coast ad I’m looking forward to performing better than I did in Glasgow because I’m obviously older now and a lot more experienced,” she said. “I didn’t really expect too much in Glasgow because it was my first Games and it was really all about the experience but now I am looking to go into these Games and hopefully perform really well. I’m looking at making it onto the podium, hopefully, although I have strong competition. There’s the Australians and the world record holder Kylie Masse, so we will see how it goes.”

The Scottish swim team may number 21 for Gold Coast but there are only 6 females selected. For a number of years, the stand-out female performer amongst the Scots has been double Commonwealth champion Hannah Miley but at the age of 28, the Garioch swimmer is almost certainly nearer the end of her career than the beginning.

As a teammate of Miley’s for the past few years, Dawson has spent a considerable amount of time around her older compatriot and she has, she admits, learnt a considerable amount from her, much of which she intends to put into practice in Gold Coast. “Hannah is someone that you always look up to and you can ask her questions if you have a query about anything as an athlete,” Dawson revealed. “She has a real familiarity about everything and it is like a home comfort being around her and knowing that she knows what she is doing.

“She’s so calm about everything she does - you don’t see her putting herself under much pressure. You need to treat the big races like any other race and it is good to see her just get on with it.”