CHRISTOPHER Anderson Jr, coach of Short Course World Championship 100-metre breaststroke champion and world record holder Alia Atkinson, is eyeing more success for the sensational swimmer.

Anderson, who has been working with the GraceKennedy Money Services ambassador for over 12 years, explained that the simple method of improving her time can bring future success.

“Constantly improving her time, gold silver and bronze will come. The same way we did when she was 14, except now she has the world record. Before it (world record) was this time that existed way in the future, and we only knew her best time and we executed her best time.

“It doesn’t change; we still know what we can accomplish, we know what we can control and we know what her goals are going to be and we have her best times. We use that as a model and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the 100m breaststroke, but that is what we are targeting,” said Anderson, while speaking at a swim camp hosted by himself and Atkinson in tandem with the Amateur Swimming Association (ASAJ) recently.

He continued: “We can find many benefits from a 100 IM (individual medley), 200 IM… 200 breaststroke, 100 backstroke or 100 free (freestyle). All we are doing is trying to improve ourselves and the outcome with that would be a faster swim for ourselves.

“So it doesn’t change in any aspect, and it shouldn’t just because you have the world record in 10 events. They are all your best times; you just focus on your best time, that’s what it’s all about.”

Having also endured some disappointments with the 26-year-old swimmer, Anderson said that maintaining a strong athlete-coach relationship has played a significant role in her success.

“Keeping things simple [and] sticking to a plan; I think that really helps tremendously. But taking more from a failure than a success, and learning from it in this sport is key,” he noted.

Atkinson became the first black woman to win a world swimming title when she won the 100m breaststroke at the Short Course World Championships in Doha last year, equalling the record of 1:02.36 minutes set by Ruta Meilutyte in 2013.

She also achieved the feat of being the second black woman to win a NCAA Championship title in 200-metre breaststroke in the 2010, while swimming for Texas A&M.

She also qualified for the 2012 Olympics 100m women’s breast stroke final after defeating Canadian rival Tera van Beilen in a head-to-head race for the final position. She subsequently placed fourth in the final of the event, finishing with a time of 1:06.93 minutes.

“That’s the one thing in sport that is so beautiful, you can literally control your own destiny. Because you know where you are at and this situation where you happen to be at the point where you have the world record, it’s no different from when she was 15 years old. All we have to do is a best time and we keep it simple that way,” said Anderson.

Finally, Anderson remains positive as they look forward to the FINA Long-Course World Championships in Kazan, Russia, later this year.

“Now she is a pro, so we have to do more things. We still have to challenge ourselves to be successful; we still attack every single one of our races.

“You just got to be positive. It has been successful so far, but we still have another 550 days to go, so we will see how that works,” he said with a smile.