SINGAPORE — Heralded as the birthplace of reggae — and music legend Bob Marley — the Carribean island of Jamaica is also known for producing some of the world’s top track and field athletes, including sprinters Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

But one swimmer — Alia Atkinson — is bucking the trend in a bid to put her country on the international swimming map.

Atkinson was in town last week to compete in the FINA/airweave Swimming World Cup as part of her preparations for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where the 26-year-old hopes to win her country’s first Olympic medal in the sport.

“I’ve accomplished a lot of things in the sport, even things that I didn’t think were possible before,” said breaststroke specialist Atkinson, who made her debut at the 2004 Athens Games at the age of 15.

“Going into 2016, I want to do something that Jamaica swimming has not done before. For the most part, we have medalled in every (swimming) meet — but not the Olympics — so that’s the goal.”

A veteran of three Olympic Games, Atkinson — who moved to the United States when she was 13 to train with South Florida Aquatics — has been making waves in the sport in recent years. After finishing fourth in the women’s 100m breaststroke at the 2012 Olympics, the swimmer won Jamaica’s first gold medal (100m breaststroke) at the World Short-Course Championships last December. She followed up the feat with another first for her country eight months later, winning a bronze in the same event at the FINA World Championships in Kazan.

The NCAA champion has met the Olympic ‘A’ qualifying mark in the 100m breaststroke for Rio, and she is aiming to add the 200m breaststroke to her schedule for next year.

Confident and chatty in person, Atkinson admitted that she had not always coped well with the pressure and expectations that came with her achievements. Comparing herself to Singapore’s Joseph Schooling, who won the Republic’s first-ever medal at the World Championships this year, she added: “Promoting swimming for me has been putting Jamaica swimming on the map. It is like Singapore having Joseph Schooling come out and promote swimming for a small country, (which) is huge.

“It’s been a tough road, because sometimes it’s only me. I am the only person of colour in the stands, at the pool decks, or on the blocks. It hasn’t been easy also on the sponsorship and the support side too, but I am a stubborn swimmer. I definitely saw a low point in 2013 at the World Championships in Barcelona. It was just (a year) after I got fourth in the Olympics. It was like all eyes were on me ... All the media was on me. For some reason, I didn’t take it very well.”

Having found solace in her hobbies — reading books on European history, and writing children’s stories — the Jamaican is determined to make her fourth appearance at the Olympics in Brazil count against the likes of defending 100m breaststroke champion Ruta Meilutyte of Lithuania and Russian Yuliya Yefimova.

“For Rio, it’s hard to go into a race to say these guys are the favourites … because you wouldn’t know who comes up,” she said. “I have to make it into semi-finals, and then the finals. Everybody from lane one to eight — I’ll take them down.”