It is 10 days until the start of the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam. The excitement is growing by the hour and as part of our extensive coverage, we begin featuring some of the star names who will be chasing glory in the Netherlands.
In Barcelona in 2010, Zuzana Hejnova missed out on a medal at the European Athletics Championships by 0.12 of a second; in Helsinki two years later, she was fourth again in the final, with 0.14 the difference this time between making the podium or not. By Zurich in 2014, injury ruled her out totally.
Now Hejnova is preparing to finally put her stamp all over an event where she could be easily travelling to the Netherlands as the defending champion.
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Those intervening years have been spectacular for one of the finest 400m hurdlers in history.
The Czech Republic athlete is now a double world champion, brilliantly retaining her title in Beijing last summer after her 2013 triumph in Moscow.
It was proof that she had not lost none of the power, the pace and the total domination which she had brought to the event before injury struck.
It is amazing to think, though, of the longevity and relationship that Hejnova, now 29, has with the European Athletics Championships.
When she steps out at the Olympic Stadium in the Dutch capital, she will be completing a decade of participation on this stage having run in Gothenburg in 2006 where once again she just missed out.
This time it was on reaching the final, finishing fifth in her semi, but it was the start of a superb career where this outdoor season she has run just once, in Ostrava last month, where she was third in 55.69, putting her joint 10th on the European Athletics rankings.
It is a list led by the defending European champion, Eilidh Doyle, of Great Britain, with 54.53, who will be a big threat.
Hejnova has been preparing at a training camp in the Czech city of Nymurk, work that is taking her to the level she needs to be at for Amsterdam and the Olympic Games in Rio a month later.
In full flow, Hejnova is just impossible to peg back and having had so many near misses in the past, there is not much doubt she will be even more determined to win a medal at this year's European Athletics Championships.
Can she do it at last? It should be one of the most fascinating stories of the whole week.
ZUZANA HEJNOVA AT THE EUROPEAN ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS
Gothenburg 2006
Semi-final 2
1. Yevgeniya Isakova (RUS) 54.17
5. Zuzana Hejnova 56.39
Barcelona 2010
Final
1. Natalya Antyukh (RUS) 52.92
2. Vania Stambolova (BUL) 53.82
3. Perri Shakes-Drayton (GBR) 54.18
4. Zuzana Hejnova 54.30
Helsinki 2012
Final
1. Irina Davydova (RUS) 53.77
2. Denisa Rosolova (CZE) 54.24
3. Anna Ryzhykova (UKR) 54.35
4. Zuzana Hejnova 54.49