Graeme Smith issued a warning to his rivals that he's back to his best with a 15min 03.15sec winning performance for the 1500m freestyle on day two of the British Super Grand Prix at the Manchester Aquatic Centre the venue for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

After a couple years in the wilderness he produced his best since winning bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. But as Smith explained afterwards "If I hadn't swum well here I would have called it a day".

The twenty five year old who will represent Scotland at next year's Commonwealth Games ploughed a lonely furrow for the whole of his thirty length battle with the stop watch. Inside his British record schedule for almost the whole of the race but it slipped away from him on the final 100m by just 0.67sec.

But the old Smith swam full of confidence through out having improved his times over the 200 and 400m distances. He claimed "I could see my time most of the way through" but when he saw his final time he thumped the touch pad in disappointment. But he did produce a British record of 8min59.10sec at the 800m mark and more importantly at this stage of the season, his final time was an all important World Championship qualifying time.

Smith was the first to admit that his long course swims of the last couple of years had been "abysmal" adding "It's about time I got back up there with the big boys". He went on to explain "It was difficult before the trails (held last month) because we had problems with the training pool and had to train short course but we've been training long course for the past four or five weeks and I feel like my fitness has improved".