Bermuda's top athlete Brian Wellman believes he can leap to the top of the triple jump world in 1999, after injury robbed him of success in 1998.

A niggling injury to his right knee forced Wellman to miss two events where he was a medal hope -- the CAC Games in August and the Commonwealth Games in September.

But now the 31-year-old is confident he can pick up where he left off as he works his way back to full fitness.

His four-month break from competitive jumping has proved enough for the injury to heal without the need for surgery and now the Arkansas-based athlete can hardly wait for the start of the new season next month.

Wellman is aiming high -- not only to win world championships, but also to break the world record.

"As an athlete, I have to go into every meet with my mind set on winning it -- otherwise it would all be a waste of time,'' said Wellman. Self-belief is not something Wellman is short of and he has set his sights on winning his event at the Indoor World Championships in Japan in March and the outdoors equivalent in Seville, Spain, next summer. Before the knee injury struck, he was producing some remarkable jumps in training, good enough to fire his belief that he can one day break the world record.

"There were a couple of sessions when I had a series of practice jumps that were good enough to have won almost all the meets last year,'' said Wellman.

"In training I don't jump off my full run-up, and if you add one per cent for that and the extra adrenalin you get when you're competing in an event for real, then you're talking about 18 metres-plus.'' But in such a highly technical event as the triple jump, injury can be a major setback, as Wellman explained. "First I have had to get back in good shape, before I could get on to working on timing,'' he said.

"And I see the key to my improvement as a technical thing and in particular, the transition from my step to my jump. If I can get that right, I am capable of jumping the other side of 60 feet (18.28 metres).'' Jonathan Edwards is the only man to have achieved that in competition and Wellman realised that nothing short of absolute dedication would enable him to emulate the Briton.

His rehabilitation from injury has involved working out in the gym from 5.30 every morning and putting himself through a two-and-a-half-hour training session each afternoon.

He spends the rest of his working day with his coach, studying nutrition and videos of himself jumping in his endless quest to iron out every minute flaw in his technique.

"Anybody who wants to compete at the very top level in track and field has to give it everything,'' said Wellman.

"If you ask anybody who wins an Olympic gold medal what they've been doing for the last three or four years, they'll tell you that training has been their entire life.

"You can't do a nine-to-five job and train in the evenings and on the weekend and expect to challenge the best. Triple jump is a tough sport to dominate. I have never seen anybody seen stay on top for more than two years at a time.'' Despite having competed at a consistently high level in his sport over the past few years, Wellman confessed it had not made him rich and estimated his earnings to be in roughly the same bracket as a construction worker in the USA.

And his knee injury did him no financial favours -- it denied him potentially rich pickings at the lucrative Grand Prix series and at the World Cup last summer.

If Wellman does bring home the gold from Japan, it will be nothing new for him. In 1995, he won the Indoor World Championships in Barcelona, Spain, with a jump of 17.72 metres, just five centimetres outside the indoor world record set by Leonid Voloshin, of Russia.

But for now, Wellman is taking a break from his intensive schedule and has returned to the Island to pay a Christmas visit to family and friends.

Despite the absence of a synthetic surface to train on in Bermuda, he has continued to simulate his triple jump moves on grass.

The new indoor season opens for Wellman on January 16 in Arkansas and he will return to the USA at the end of this month to continue his preparations.

`If you ask anyone who wins an Olympic gold what they've been doing for the past four years, they'll tell you training has been their entire life.' Brian Wellman