Randall still focused

The 21-year-old will jet out to a training base in Doha on Monday before heading to the crisis-hit event in Delhi, despite major concerns over athletes' safety and health.

The build-up to the Games has been beset by difficulties, prompting fears that some competing nations would pull out.

Several high-profile individual athletes have already opted to stay at home amid a stream of concerns over sanitation in the athletes' village, an outbreak of dengue fever, monsoon floods and crumbling infrastructure.

But Randall remains committed to the English cause and is determined to not only travel to India, but to ignore the problems and improve on the silver she won in Melbourne four years ago.

"I've heard these stories," she told Eurosport. "But at the moment I'm just concentrating on training and trying to get the best out of the time before the Commonwealth Games, because we leave on Monday.

"We are focusing on training and putting in our best performance at the Games.

"Everything else is out of our hands. We just have to concentrate on what we do."

Randall, who has just been boosted by a new sponsorship deal with Kelloggs, will compete in Delhi alongside long-time duet partner Olivia Allison (pictured on the right of the photo).

The pair came fifth at the European Championships - the UK’s best placing in five years - and became the first Britons to compete in the synchronised swimming competition at an Olympics in 16 years when they debuted at Beijing in 2008.

Together they finished fourth in the duet at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, with Randall’s silver a career highlight.

Considering her CV, it is no surprise that Randall and Allison have been identified as a medal hope for the London Olympics in 2012.

With that, inevitably, comes a degree of pressure but Randall is happy to shoulder that burden if it means raising the profile of what she accepts is still a minority sport in the UK.

"That (raising the sport's profile) is what I've wanted to do ever since I was young," she said.

"So I find especially now that the 2012 Olympics are in London there is a lot of pressure on Olivia and I to get good results.

"We're trying hard to train with other countries to get more knowledge from the best countries in the world like Russia and Spain.

"We're focusing on our training and making sure everything goes smoothly on the way to 2012."

Randall's relationship with Allison has been key to her success, her partner providing the necessary rivalry in the training pool to spur her on to greater things.

"Olivia and I get on really well," she said. "We work really well in the pool together. We share the same goals in that we want to win Olympic golds and we respect each other a lot.

"It's great we've been working together since 2005. We've got to know each other quite well.

"When we're training, it's important to have healthy competition because that's the thing that will push you along a lot quicker.

"We do have a bit of friendly rivalry, which is great for us. It's made us improve much more quickly."

The obvious next step on Randall's career path will be to go one better than 2006 and claim gold at the Commonwealths in Delhi next month. And after that an Olympic medal.

"The Commonwealth Games are definitely a stepping stone to Olympic glory," she said.

"It's a major competition for us and every competition is great for us to go out there and improve Great Britain's reputation in synchro."