Swimming: Balfour is walking on water

It is a long way from Sheffield to Beijing, 5,020 miles as the crow might fly, but at the British Olympic swimming trials in the Steel City this week the Chinese capital has been only a touch of the pool wall away. The determination to get there has been etched on the faces of the eight finalists who have been led to their starting blocks for each final by female stewards in Chinese national dress.

Of the 40 competitors introduced to the crowd before the start of the five finals on Thursday morning's programme at the Ponds Forge pool, only one was sufficiently relaxed to offer a smile and a wave of acknowledgement to the crowd. Even as she lined up for the women's 100m breaststroke final, Kirsty Balfour knew her place in the British team for Beijing was assured. The silver medal she won behind Australia's Leisel Jones at the World Championships in Melbourne last year secured Olympic pre-selection for the 24-year-old from Edinburgh in her specialist event, the 200m breaststroke.

Still, she wanted a team place at the shorter distance too. And she duly achieved it, finishing runner-up to Kate Haywood of Lincoln in 1min 8.05sec.

"I am happy with that," said Balfour, sitting up in the stands after a swim-down and a visit to drug-testing. "I did what I came here to do and qualified for that individual spot for the 100."

There is a serenity about Balfour both in and out of the water. As she steps on to the starting blocks for races she mentally recites verses from the Bible, usually Matthew 22:37: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

Another Edinburgh sporting figure had a similar thought in mind when he famously sped to Olympic gold on the track in Paris in 1924. Before he took his place on the start line for the 400m in Stade Colombes, Eric Liddell had been given a note from the British team masseur containing the words of 1 Samuel 2, verse 30: "Them that honour me, I will honour". It inspiredthe Scotland rugby wing to an unlikely victory at a distance unfamiliar to him; he had forsaken a place in his specialist event, the 100m, because the heats fell on the Sabbath. Liddell went on to work as a Christian missionary in China and died there, of a brain tumour, in a Japanese internment camp during the latter stages of World War Two.

Does the fact that the Olympic Games are to be held on Chinese soil, then, give them any extra resonance for a practising Christian from Liddell's home city? "I've not really thought about it from that perspective," Balfour said. "I haven't really read a great deal about Eric Liddell but I know the Chariots of Fire story."

It just so happens that a new biography of Liddell, Running the Race, is fresh on the bookshelves, written by John Keddie, who acted as an adviser to Colin Welland on the script for David Puttnam's Oscar-winning story of Liddell and Harold Abrahams and how they came to strike gold at the 1924 Olympics.

It remains to be seen whether Balfour can ride a submersible chariot to Olympic glory in Beijing. Jones has been the undisputed world No 1 in the 200m breaststroke over the past two years but the Scot is the clear No 2, taking world and Commonwealth silver behind the Australian, then the European crown in Budapest in 2006.

A medal of some description is a realistic target for the woman who lives on the outskirts of Edinburgh at Fairmilehead, just up the road from the Eric Liddell Centre, a Christian-run community facility in Morningside.

"I do pray before races," Balfour said, when asked about the parallels between herself and Liddell. "I just commit the race over to God and thank Him for the opportunity of representing Him and my country, and for knowing that the result is not the be-all and end-all. At the end of the day I just have that sort of peace, knowing God is in charge of my future and he's watching over me. It brings a lot of comfort and it helps with the nerves.

"I suppose a lot of athletes are defined by their results, but I find that, being a Christian, my results are just a part of what I do; they don't make me who I am. Just being able to realise that, and being able to look at things from a different angle and not get caught up in being absolutely distraught if things don't gowell... it does really help."

For British swimming, after a week of national, Commonwealth and even world record-breaking feats, things appear to be going well on the waterway to Beijing. "It's really nice to be a part of British swimming just now," Balfour said as she and her Olympic-qualified team-mates prepared to go to the World Short Course Championships at the MEN Arena in Manchester, running from Wednesday to Sunday.

"All of our hard work is coming through. We're gradually catching up the Australians and the Americans, who have ruled the world of swimming for so long. I think we're a lot more confident now than we were at the Olympics four years ago."