OLYMPIC hopeful Jaime King is flying out to Helsinki to face the cream of Europe.

She will be swimming in the 200m breaststroke at the European Championships but still has her sights firmly set on earning a place in the Great Britain sqaud which will travel to Sydney this autumn.

The trials will be in Sheffield in three weeks and the 23-year-old will be using her trip to Finland as part of her preparations.

She said: I'm really treating this as a bit of a warm up because my main priority has to be to get into the Olympic squad.

The trials are not long away now and I don't have any idea how I'm going to do. We'll just have to see how it goes."

Jaime has made the England squad for the last two games. In 1992, she surprised everyone by winning the trials to go to Barcelona and was the youngest member of the squad at 15.

She gained a bronze medal in the medley relay at the European championships in 1993.

She has been a full-time swimmer since she left New College when she was 19 and trains at the swimming centre of excellence at the University of Bath with Paul Palmer.

Jaime's European campaign begins with heats on Friday (July 7). The semi-finals will then be held later that day with the final taking place on Saturday.

She now has to keep up her training regime and keep ticking over before booking her place on the flight to Australia.