The Greek island of Crete is the venue of the European Athletics Team Championships First League on the weekend of 20-21 June when Heraklion plays host to 12 nations looking to secure one of three spots into next year’s Super League.
And for Zuzana Hejnova, it will be an important step along the way as she builds to make her mark again this summer on the international scene.
Hejnova will be the defending 400m hurdles world champion in August after her success in Moscow in 2013 but since then it has all been about injuries, comebacks, different distances and the future.
That future is here and the now will be in just a few weeks when she wears the colours of the Czech Republic in a competition where her team will want immediate promotion after their relegation last June in Braunschweig.
The Czech Republic has quite a mixed relationship with this competition having won the First League in Dublin two years before suffering the drop last summer.
As for Hejnova, she has some record in the championships where on her last appearance in 2013 in Dublin, she won the flat 400m in 51.90, a good speed test as she built towards her hurdles peak.
Now it could be different because she has missed so many major races over the barriers, with injury forcing her out of last summer’s European Athletics Championships in Zurich.
Heraklion might see her wanting to attack the hurdles to not only win maximum points for her team, but equally show she is back to her best.
She returned to huge noise and adulation in Prague in March at the European Athletics Indoor Championships where she chose to run the 800m and was knocked out in the heats before running the anchor leg as the Czech Republic were fourth in the 4x400m relay.
Her success at the European Athletics Team Championships hit its height in the Super League in Stockholm in 2011 when she won the 400m hurdles in 53.87, a championship record and a national record (she has since lowered that to 52.83), having triumphed in the First League in Budapest in 54.51, 12 months earlier.