In Moscow last summer, Croatia’s Ana Simic did not make the final of the high jump at the IAAF World Championships. Her best in qualifying was 1.88m and it meant an early exit from an event won by Russian Svetlana Shkolina.
But from disappointment can arrive new desire, and it is why Simic is the woman the rest have to catch in the third Diamond League meeting of the season in Eugene on Saturday.
Europe has had a fairly low-key start to the women’s high jump this outdoor season - but that could all change.
Not that Simic would probably see it that way.
She will enter the Hayward Field Stadium as this year’s Diamond Race leader and World No. 1 after an impressive three days earlier in the month.
At the last Diamond League meeting in Shanghai, Simic won the high jump – the first time it had been staged in this year’s programme – with 1.97m and then she crossed China to Beijing where she cleared 1.98m in the IAAF World Challenge event.
As for now, Shkolina and her teammate Anna Chicherova, the Olympic champion, have not jumped in a major event outdoors this year. Neither has another Russian, Mariya Kuchina, or the woman she shared World Indoor gold with in March in Sopot, Kamila Licwinko of Poland.
But along with Simic, all four of them are in Eugene for what could be a classic high jump competition between so many of the medal contenders at the European Athletics Championships in Zurich in August.
Last year in Moscow, Russian eyes were on Chicherova who was defending her world title. The crowd were not let down, they went home happy – but it was not her success they were celebrating.
Shkolina took gold with a personal best of 2.03m and in Eugene - where the two-day meeting starts on Friday night - she will face the American she beat to that glory, Brigetta Barrett, who was second with 2.00m.
It is some field, with Russia’s Irina Gordeeva, the European bronze medallist, also competing along with Alessia Trost, the Italian star who won the World Junior title in Barcelona in 2010 and the European Athletics Under-23 gold last summer.
But at the top of the tree is Simic. The lead is hers to lose. It should be fascinating.