Michael Jamieson will spend a couple of weeks in Cyprus training alongside the rest of Britain’s finest swimmers as part of the vital final few weeks of preparation for the World Championships in Shanghai this summer.  

And following his silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi last October, the 22-year-old Scot is one of the Brits in the limelight in the countdown to the Olympic Games in London that are now a mere 15 months away. 

A winner of the 100m and 200m breaststroke at the British Gas British Championships in Manchester in March, Jamieson is not afraid to state his ambition of stepping onto another major podium in Shanghai in July.

“Some of the coaches say that I am too hard on myself and pile on too much pressure,” said the Glasgow-born youngster. “But I want to medal this summer. I think I am capable of doing it.”

A swimmer since the age of nine, Jamieson trained in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Paris before joining up with his present coach, Dave McNulty, at the British ITC in Bath almost two years ago.

This season, he has been joined in England by his former City of Edinburgh team mate, Kris Gilchrist. And he is now overshadowing the 28-year-old who competed at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and is also hoping to make it to London.

“It’s been good having Kris in the squad and it’s just a shame that he hasn’t made it to Shanghai,” said Jamieson. “We have a good set-up in Bath and it is great to have another Scot to train alongside.”

GB has a great tradition in breaststroke. Anita Lonsborough won an Olympic 100m gold in Rome in 1960 – it was another 48 years before Rebecca Adlington claimed another women’s Olympic swimming title for Britain – and Adrian Moorhouse won the men’s 100m in Seoul in 1988.

Nick Gillingham was the last Brit to make a mark in Jamieson’s favourite 200m breaststroke. The Birmingham man was an Olympic silver medalist and took the World title in 1993.

Gillingham, now a respected coach and motivational speaker, believes that Jamieson could be the next GB star in his beloved discipline.  

"I have been really impressed by Michael," he said. "Not just taking silver medal at the Commonwealth Games but by what he has said in interviews, admitting when he is disappointed by his performance goals.”

Jamieson just missed out on the last World Championships in Rome two years ago, so it quite a jump to be classed alongside the likes of Adlington and Scot Hannah Miley as a genuine medal prospect in Shanghai.

The full GB squad headed to Cyprus on May 3 for the fortnight’s training camp – and Shanghai will be the last major swimming event before the ultimate pressure-packed stage of London 2012.

A devotee of swimming since he left school at the age of 17, Jamieson is one of a band of British sports people who have put the rest of their lives on hold as they target a home Olympics. The opening ceremony - July 27, 2012 – has long been imprinted on their minds. It is a date that is hovering so tantalisingly – the dangling carrot or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“I do have a little distraction from swimming because I’m studying sports performance at Bath University,” he said. “More serious studying will come later.”

What can’t be put on hold is the hard training that he hopes will be rewarded with a medal in Shanghai in a couple of months’ time And that really would be the perfect fillip in the final 12 month countdown to Britain’s biggest sporting spectacle.