At the weekend Luxembourg's talented swimmer Laurent Carnol qualified for this summer's Olympic Games in impressive style. Swimming on home turf, in Kirchberg's Coque sports centre, the 22 year-old not only comfortably won the 200m breast stroke final in 2'09''78, but in doing so, also easily beat the time norm for London, which was set at 2'11''74. The Ettelbrück native can now fully concentrate on this summer's big event.

The other great hope in Luxembourg's swimming squad, Raphael Stachiotti, just missed out on a direct Olympic qualification this weekend, failing by mere 5 hundredths of a second. However, officials for Luxembourg's Olympic Committee (COSL) told news352.lu that there is a 99 % chance of the international swimming federation considering this time to be good enough for qualification.

Luxembourg currently has five athletes, that have already qualified for London 2012 : Andy and Frank Schleck in cycling, Ni-Xa Leen in women's table tennis, Jeff Henckels in archery and as of this weekend, Laurent Carnol in swimming. As mentioned before, swimmer Stachiotti is expected to be a sixth participant.

Other hopes rest on Olympic qualifications for Luxembourgish athletes in judo, tennis, triathlon, women's cycling, gymnastics and pistol-shooting.

The deadline, by which the starting list for London 2012 will be complete, is on 9 July.