When her name is announced to the crowd in Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium in July, the venue will rock with noise and excitement in what will be one of the moments of the summer season.
And already Dafne Schippers is heading towards the European Athletics Championships in her home country in blistering form.
Schippers, the European 100m and 200m champion and 200m world champion, has roared to the top of the world 200m lists with a superb run of 22.25 (-0.2) for victory in Gainesville at the Tom Jones Memorial.
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On a rain-hit track, the Dutchwoman overcame the conditions superbly to dominate the race from the start in lane six, stretching away at the finish to beat 400m specialist Quanera Hayes, of the USA, who ran a personal best in second (22.89).
Her time beat the 22.26 world lead from American Tori Bowie earlier this month and will send out signals that in this Olympic year, she will be the woman to catch. Schippers has never started a year so quick at the 200m, beginning with 22.63 in 2015.
But if one world lead was not enough….Schippers then found herself at the top of the tree in another event. Running the second leg of an international 4x100m relay, she combined with Britain’s Desiree Henry and Anyika Onuora and American Tianna Bartoletta to run 42.22.
Schippers made her name as a track athlete with her double at the European Athletics Championships in Zurich and now off the back of her first winter training solely as a sprinter, rather than mixing it with the heptathlon, she could become such a force.
In Beijing last summer, she won 100m silver to go with her 200m gold and on May 6 she will have another good early challenge when she meets American star Allyson Felix in the 100m at the IAAF Diamond League in Doha.