LIKAEABLE ALICIA WILL RETURN HOME WITH GOLDEN GLOW
October 8: Popular Aussie swimmer Alicia Coutts went to California for this year's Pan Pacs alongside the biggest names in the Australian Swim Team Rice, Schipper, Sullivan, Lauterstein and Rickard. Fox Sports Games expert Ian Hanson looks at the girl they call likeable Alicia.
No hype around Alicia; no television commercials; no photo shoots or interviews and no expectations just some determined, hard work from the swimmer and careful, scientific planning from her coach, utilising one of the best training facilities in world sport.
The shy, unassuming youngster from Brisbane, who has forged her career under coach John Fowlie at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, left Irvine after mixing it with the Americans girls, feeling quietly confident that things could be on the up.
Steph Rice withdrew from the competition and the Games to return home to Australia for shoulder surgery, leaving the door 
wide open for new stars to be born.
Likeable Alicia stormed home to win bronze in the 100m butterfly in a personal best time of 57.99 to clock the sixth fastest time by an Australian with Schipper and the experienced Felicity Galvez in the B final.
Signs that there could well be another rising star in the Dolphins ranks, a young girl who had two abdominal surgeries which kept her out of the pool last season.
Enter Delhi without Rice and with Schipper only contesting the 200m at the Commonwealth Games and medals were certainly on the menu.
Forward thinking Fowlie primed his 23-year-old rising star for the best performance of her life.
Her breaststroke-to-freestyle legs saw her swim over the top of Pan Pac gold medallist and team mate Emily Seebohm to clock 2:09.70, the fastest time in the world this year.
Australia sees her smile and starts to get to know a rising star of the pool at 23, not 15 or 16 and a girl who had finished fifth in the 200IM final at the 2008 Olympics.
Next up the 100m freestyle and likeable Alicia swims over the top of the field again, finishing off her races and nailing her turns to clock another pb and climbs from outside the Australian top ten to become the seventh fastest in history with her time of 54.09.
Likeable Alicia, who shrugs her shoulders when praise is heaped on her by poolside TV commentators, is quickly becoming the star of the Games.
Three races later and the receptionist who has become the rage of the Games lines up last night in the 100m butterfly final, gold medal number three very much on the cards especially with English girl Fran Halsall missing the final.
Perfectly prepared again by coach Fowlie and likeable Alicia swims yet another pb of 57.53 to add her third gold of the Games to become the first swimmer in Games history to win the 200IM, 100 butterfly and 100m freestyle treble.
It now sets her up for the 4x100m medley and the 4x100m freestyle relays and the chance to equal Libby Trickett's effort to win five gold medals from Melbourne in 2006.
Australian Head Coach Leigh Nugent has a rare selection dilemma with his two top butterfliers Coutts and Seebohm already securing places in the medley team in the freestyle and backstroke.
Enter the dearth of Aussie butterfly girls, Felicity Galvez, Yolane Kukla, Marieke Guehrer and Schipper?
Galvez, one of Australia's most reliable relay swimmers, was a fast finishing fifth in last night's final and looks set to join Coutts, Seebohm and Leisel Jones in an exciting new-look medley relay team, thanks to likeable Alicia.