"She's like, 'I have to go all the way across the pool?' " her father recalled her asking.

Yet Grant decided she would give it a try, and prepared to swim the anchor leg of the relay. Wearing her "pink swimsuit with the little frillies and no swim cap and no goggles," her father Matt Grant said, she watched as her team fell far behind before her turn finally came. She jumped in, feet first.

"There were some kids that were like half the pool ahead of her," Matt Grant recalled, "and in 25 yards, she passes every single kid in the pool. It went from cheering to where it was just silent. People were like, 'What did we just see?' "

The birth of an Olympian, evidently. Now a freshman at Brigham Young, Rachel Grant is poised for a remarkable accomplishment - not just to compete in this summer's Beijing Olympics in China, but to do so representing Hong Kong, the "special administrative region" of the host nation where she was born to her Chinese mother and American father.

"It's kind of surreal to me, still," she said.

Many athletes from universities and pro teams in Utah have competed in the Olympics for other nations. But few - if any - have done so in their home country, especially one weighted with as many political, economic and social overtones as China.

Yet if everything goes according to plan for the rest of her first college season, Grant expects to be swimming the 200-meter butterfly and 400 individual medley in front of all of her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who still live in Hong Kong.

"I've been thinking about it a lot more" lately, she said, "just, like, getting nervous. But I'm trying to take it one day at a time. Just, like, training hard so that I can perform my best when the time comes."

Grant said she never thought much about swimming in the Olympics until last year, when her parents - Matt and Gabi Grant met while in school at BYU, and he served an LDS Church mission to Hong Kong - pointed out that she was swimming times almost fast enough to qualify. She has only improved while working with the Cougars.

"She's an amazing athlete," BYU coach Stan Crump said. "She's strong, and she has been swimming very well, compared to what she usually does in the middle of the season."

Since she is a dual citizen - the Grants moved to California when Rachel was a toddler, and Matt Grant is a Cedar City native with family all over Utah County - Grant is eligible to represent Hong Kong, where the competition for Olympic spots is not nearly as intense as in the United States.

So all she has to do to reach Beijing is swim to her ability at the Hong Kong Olympic Trials in April, where she figures to be one of the best swimmers, and clock Olympic qualifying times in her events. She already has done that in the 400 IM, she said, and is only 0.1 seconds off in the 200 butterfly, an event in which she holds the Hong Kong national record.

The only catch?

She must swim the qualifying times (repeat them, in the case of the 400 IM) and the trials in a "long-course," 50-meter pool, something to which she's not accustomed while competing collegiately in "short-course" 25-meter pools.

"The difference is the amount of turns and rest you get," Crump said. "It's a whole different shooting match when you have three turns instead of one every 100 meters."

That makes Grant admittedly nervous, especially because she won't have much time to adjust, with the Hong Kong Olympic Trials barely three weeks after the NCAA Championships. And there aren't many long-course meets after that at which she could swim her qualifying times - presuming she otherwise places well enough at the Hong Kong trials - though she might compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials at the end of June for the experience.

In the meantime, she just keeps training.

mcl@sltrib.com