WHEN Hannah Miley talks about her preparations for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, she paints a picture of a young woman who is as focused as a laser.

Her unwavering philosophy is this: all she can control is her own actions, everything else is simply white noise.

With the 24-year-old swimmer set to compete on day one in Glasgow this July, she would be forgiven for feeling the pressure more than most. It is a scenario Miley is all too familiar with, mirroring London 2012 when the pundits had laid Britain's opening medal hopes firmly with Mark Cavendish in the men's road race with the caveat that, if that bid failed, then all eyes would turn to Miley in the pool.

"Everyone has that expectation and you have to shut yourself off into a little bubble," she says. "You realise you can't force it to happen. You need to get all the pieces together then wait and see if the end result is good enough for a medal. Anything can happen: your main rival can be disqualified, you could be disqualified.

"You train so hard but look at the Winter Olympics and speed skater Elise Christie. That could have happened at any other event, but it happened in the big one and that is life. I believe everything happens for a reason and then it's a case of what you do with that."

Miley has moved on from the disappointment of London where she finished fifth in the women's 400m individual medley final and is now able to draw on the positives. "I have analysed it to death and there's now no point dwelling on it," she says. "The home crowd and the fact I was able to produce a really good swim to make it through to the top eight in the world and then finish in the top five which was better than in Beijing - I'm able to use that exper-ience to make me a better athlete."

The Inverurie swimmer, who is coached by her father Patrick, was among the 40-strong Team Scotland aquatics contingent named last month. She will be defending the 400m individual medley title won in Delhi in her third consecutive Commonwealth Games. There have long been murmurings that Miley perhaps needs to look beyond her father, a North Sea helicopter pilot, as a coach if she is to progress further in the sport, but she has always shot down any such suggestions.

"I sat my SAT exams in case I needed to move to America and created that safety net, but it never came to that," she says. "Every year I have made a progression and every year it has felt right. The relationship I have with my dad is very much one on one and I wouldn't get that anywhere else. You can have the best facility in the world, but if you've not got the right coach then you're not going to go anywhere. I know my dad is the best coach for me."

When she speaks, Miley has a knack for unleashing not so much a stream of consciousness but a torrent. Her sentences gallop into one another other, a refreshing change from the often monosyllabic, controlled responses of many within the sporting arena. She is also candid. The horror stories that emerged from the Delhi Games is the stuff of legend: plagues of insects bombarding spectators, cobras in the Athletes' Village, overflowing toilets, long queues, deserted accommodation and a raft of tummy problems that floored many of the top stars.

Miley's recollection of events is no less memorable. "The shower was built on a slope with the plug at the top end, so I couldn't really have a shower," she says. "I would have had a bath, but I couldn't because there were rusty nails protruding through the side of it, so I decided to get the shower head and hold it over the bath to wash my hair. I shampooed, rinsed it out and put conditioner on, but then I went to flick my hair back over and smashed my head on the side of the bath and knocked myself out. That wasn't great before the competition had started."

She envisages it being rather different this time around. "Thinking back to it now, it all adds up to great stories and memories, but I know Glasgow will run a lot smoother," she says. "Everything is going to be how a Commonwealth Games should be. The memories I'll have from this will definitely be more positive."