News story from Sports Beat. 22 February 2011

11 times Paralympic gold-medallist David Roberts has vowed to race within himself at the British Gas Swimming Championships - with the bigger fish of this summer’s European Championships top of his agenda.

David has endured a nightmare two years since his 2008 Beijing Paralympic heroics, where he won four gold medals, - plagued by a host of injuries including a badly broken arm and ribs as well as suffering from kidney stones.

The 30-year-old’s 2011 campaign begins in earnest at the Manchester-hosted National Championships in early March and despite racing with a broken knuckle, Roberts is adamant he will be on the pace.

But with the bigger carrot of the IPC Swimming European Championships topping his 2011 agenda the Welsh ace admits the trip to Manchester is more of a dress rehearsal than a dedicated medal hunt.

European Championship qualifying times are what everyone wants to leave Manchester with - and Roberts is no different.

“With the Europeans coming up in the summer the national championships are more of an exercise in getting the qualification times for that,” said David - who has been supplementing his normal training routine by working with Commonwealth Games boxing gold medallist Jamie Arthur.

“If you can get those out of the way now then for the next 3-4 months you are able to concentrate solely on your training and getting ready for Berlin which would be a nice situation to be in.

“If you qualify then you can relax because you know you are going.”

And while anxious to play down the importance of medals in Manchester with the end of his long winter training slog in sight David admits he can’t wait to get into some competitive racing.

“I am in the final stage of my preparation now and it is a nice place to be,” added David.  “Sometimes in the winter when you are training you wonder why you are doing it all but when you get to this point it’s a nice place to be and you can see it is worthwhile.”