WHEN she made a splash at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi as a 13-year-old S3 pupil, Grace Reid became known amongst her Team Scotland colleagues ‘s ‘Baby Grace’. In the Gold Coast this fortnight, a grizzled veteran at all of 21, she is already being christened ‘Grandma Grace’. Having moved down to a bespoke little training group at the London Olympic pool with respected coach Jane Figureido and Tom Daley, alongside whom she won a world championship silver medal in Budapest last year, and European gold from London in 2016 in the mixed 3m synchronised springboard, the world appears to be Reid’s oyster. Even if losing her oyster card as she attempted to negotiate London’s public transport network on day two was enough to make her feel that she was out of her depth.

“I am renting with a friend in the East End of London but I don’t have the accent - not yet anyway,” said Reid. “I have managed to narrow down the commute but it also means that on the weekends, as Grace the person, rather than Grace the diver, I can go to the Tate Modern or out exploring to Shoreditch etc. London has so much to offer and for a 21 years old that is just so exciting. Having said that, the most poignant moment of my London move was on day two. I thought ‘okay, I’m going to get out an about and explore’ and I went down the South Bank but within five minutes I had lost my Oyster Card and I thought ‘I don’t think I’m ready for this!’ That was me realising that I was on my own and that this was independent living. It was kind of scary but now I take it all in my stride. I hop on and off like a proper Londoner.”

Reid might be in at the deep end right now but her continuing to come of age as a seasoned competitor on the international stage seems one of the safer Scottish bets of this fortnight. Rather than cringe when the 21-year-old looks back on being that callow 13-year-old growing up in the media glare, she feels it made her what she is today. The hard part wasn’t the competition, it was having to react to normality when she returned to school. “It is kind of scary,” she says. “Eight years ago, it was Baby Grace and I was a tiny little thing, heading off to India, still in S3, and no-one knew me. That was lovely and there was no pressure but now, I suppose I am the veteran, or Grandma Grace, as they often refer to me now, and this is my third Games. It is still exciting but there is a little bit more pressure now and that’s the nature of the beast.

“Oh no, I don’t cringe [when I look back],” she said. “They are some of my proudest moments. We had a family dinner last night and in the dining room there are two pictures of me stood at the closing ceremony with one of the umbrellas that were used and a Scotland flag wrapped around me. While Delhi was overwhelming in some ways a lot of it did actually go over my head because I was so young I didn’t appreciate the enormity of it all which was a bonus in a lot of ways. Coming back was the difficult part, not knowing what to do next.

“The aftermath was really difficult and it was hard to adjust,” she added. “Coming back to sit my standard grade exams was really difficult and my peers maybe didn’t quite appreciate that I had just been to a Commonwealth Games and I didn’t really appreciate that either. It is only now that I look back that I can see that ‘wow, that really wasn’t normal for a 13 year old to be in Delhi for a month’.”

Now, in addition to having a third games to remember, Reid hopes she can pass similar tips on to the likes of 14-year-old para swimmer Toni Shaw, just like swimmer Corrie Scott and some members of the hockey team helped her back in the day. “I would like to think that this time the younger ones will feel they are able to come and talk to me this time, whether it’s about their sport, food in the village, whatever it is,” she said.

“But on a personal level, I am really hopeful of having a good Games and building on the past two, which have really been about building my experience,” she added. “My discipline and my event is really tough, with five of the girls who are in the top eight in the world just now are in the Commonwealth so it is a tough field. But I like it when the going is tough. I don’t like it when it is too easy. It is going to be hard and it will be a battle for medals and it will be a battle even to be in a final so I’m not taking anything for granted, it will be a step at a time.”

Everything Reid achieves will be despite a couple of not insignificant little handicaps. Not only did she sit out the national diving championships this year with a complication brought on by the genetic abnormality of a bone spur in her foot, even diving outdoors in Australia will be a little bit of culture shock. “I have been living with this all my life but because I have had a really tough block of training, it has become unsettled,” said Reid. “But that’s just the way it is. I’m going to have that extra bit of bone for the rest of my life. It is genetic and my dad has it as well.”

As for the pool, it is “very different”. “The easiest way to describe the difficulties is that usually the ceiling is a different colour to the water but then all of a sudden we are outside and the sky is blue and the water is blue so it is hard to differentiate and can be disorienting,” she says. “I am quite fortunate that I have had a lot experience and Scottish Swimming has taken us to Perth multiple times to get used to outdoor diving and to get used to the climate and Rio was outdoors as well.”