LONDON 2012: Realistic Geikie looking to follow her ancestor and blaze a trail

Posted: Wednesday 18th July 2012 | 10:26

GEORGINA Geikie has enjoyed a bit of a rollercoaster in the unrelenting countdown to the London 2012 Olympics.

EXCITED: Georgina Geikie has experience of two Commonwealth Games but is making her Olympic debut at London 2012 (Nathan Gallagher)

She picked up shooting bronze at the Commonwealth Games, then saw her funding cut, qualified an Olympic place for Great Britain with a 13th place at last year's European Championships but still sweated on selection and then carried the Olympic torch through her home county of Devon.

But with just days to go until her Games debut, the 27-year old is refusing to set sights too high - after all Great Britain might have won 43 shooting medals since the Games began, including 12 golds, but a Team GB women has never claimed a podium place.

Geikie though should have no problems with blazing a trail - after all, it's in her genes.

Her great-great-great-granddaughter Sir Archibald Geikie was a 19th century adventurer and map maker, who even has a ridge system on the Moon named in his honour.

So his ancestor, who combines training with working as a part-time barmaid, has lofty ambitions to aspire to.

"My view is that I’m in the competition, so I can win it, you can’t ever settle for second best." she said.

"That’s the simple way to say it, I’m thoroughly keeping my feet on the ground and you need to be realistic about the challenge.

“I want to go perform and do a personal best because at the end of the day, all I can do is my very best. If that’s good enough on the day, then I’ll be good enough on the day.

“There are a lot of fantastic athletes around the world – this is the Olympic Games and getting a gold medal is not an easy feat, especially in this sport."

Geikie has spent time at Team GB's preparation camp in Loughborough and will shortly move into her apartment in the Olympic village, with shooting events taking place just a few miles away in Greenwich.

“We’ve done the hard work and we’ve got that behind us, so it’s all about polishing that diamond and making our performance the best we can," she added.

“We're not going over the top on training and making sure we get a good balance of rest and keeping fresh.

"Keeping a psychological balance is very important, but at the same time, honing our techniques and visualising.

“I’m doing a lot of visualisation because I know what the venue is going to look like and with all the people telling me what tickets they have got, you can almost imagine seeing friendly faces around the crowd.

“I’m using a lot of environmental visualisation to prepare myself for the competition itself.”