SHE may be nearly 80, but she's a water baby at heart. Dorothy Williams is on a swimming streak with more than 500 medals and now a world record to her name.

Since taking part in her first Masters swimming championship at the age of 64, she has not looked back and has been all over this country and to Canada, Switzerland and Brazil to compete.

She says she's swimming now better than she ever has.

"I like being a competitor. I do such little training, but when I'm on my starting block I just want to win," said Dorothy.

Dorothy won her first swimming medal aged 11 at the Middlesex Inter Schools Gala. At 31, while working as an attendant at a swimming baths in Hounslow, she entered the borough championships and won the 100-yard breaststroke.

She joined a club and became a swimming instructor, but it was another 30 years before she began making a splash at contests regularly. After dipping her toe in the water by taking part in a swimming event in Cornwall in 1987, she looked into veteran tournaments and entered herself into the first Great Britian Masters championships. She came home with two silver medals in her age group.

"I, who came back from that first championship with a silver in the 50-metre breaststroke, have now broken the 200-metre breaststroke world record," Dorothy said proudly

She broke the record at the championships held in Guernsey in April by more than 10 seconds. The certificate is hung with pride on the wall of her Spring-bourne home, together with others commemorating world records she has helped set as part of a team.

Dorothy, who swims at the Littledown Centre pool, has also set British and European records in her age group. Flicking through lists of other swimming record holders, she says many are training two or three times a week and some are even former Olympic competitors.

"Before a competition I might go to the pool twice a week and do 20 lengths and that's it - I'm shattered," she said. "I have had a back problem all my life and I get all the aches and pains everyone else does. But for my age, I know I'm very lucky."