THE postponement of the Tokyo Olympics due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has forced Alia Atkinson, Jamaica’s most successful swimmer ever, to readjust her goals in the sport as she may be looking at another 18 months before she hangs up her swimsuit.

Atkinson, the two-time short course world record holder, was hoping the Games, which were set to start next month, would be her her fifth and last before calling it a day and setting her sights on her next challenge. But now she is forced to change her mindset as she now has to set long-term goals.

The 31-year-old Florida-based swimmer said what were short-term goals for this year as her career wound down have now been transformed into long-term ones.

“So it’s not necessarily the small goals now,” she said during an online panel discussion hosted by The Olympians Association of Jamaica (OAJ) last Thursday under the theme ‘Keeping your competitive edge during the pandemic’. “I really have to focus on the long-term goals for this moment because it is not necessarily the little things to keep me going, it is ‘Now, can I dedicate the next 18 months to doing what I need to do?’ ”

To achieve this, Atkinson said “For me it’s just training my mindset and getting myself as physically ready as I can [so that] when everything starts back up I can jump back in.”

With nearly all her swim meets – including the International Swimming Federation (FINA) short course World Championships in December – being postponed or cancelled the immediate future is not that clear, and she admitted the last few months have been difficult.

“These past couple months have been something else,” she said. “I have not been able to get into the water in the last couple of months and have not been able to catch the feel of the water and all of the little things that make it what it is,” she added.

“What I have been doing is [to] focus on my weakness. Funny enough, my weakness is running. I have been doing a lot of running, doing sprints and hills – different things that I can somewhat control in this uncontrollable situation,” Atkinson pointed out.

Focusing on her weak points and “how I can look at that in the future”, she says, has been uppermost in her preparation as she looks to get back into the water. “[I’m] working on the little things as well as changing my mindset, because the Olympics was supposed to be this year and I was supposed to retire this year, more than likely. So, it just changes a lot and what do you do now?

“For me, I decided to keep on going, don’t know what else is left. I had a competition in December but that was cancelled as well.”