Leaving Tokyo three years ago, despite having failed to win a single gold medal for the first time since Atlanta 1996, the mood in the British athletics team was buoyant.
The Games had brought a number of major breakthroughs, most notably first global medals for Keely Hodgkinson and Josh Kerr, and the first real sense of a team ready to move on from the Super Saturday generation of 2012.
Eyes then, were already on Paris, where over the next 10 days there is realistic hope Britain could enjoy their best Olympics on the track since London.
Kerr and Hodgkinson are at the head of the charge. The former won the world 1500m title in Budapest last year, emulating Jake Wightman by picking the pocket of Jakob Ingebrigtsen over the final half-lap, and the pair’s latest meeting is set to be one of the highlights of the Games.
Hodgkinson, though, is Team GB’s leading hope, a superstar in-waiting having claimed silver in Tokyo and at both of the World Championships since. The 22-year-old smashed her own British record over 800m at London’s Diamond League meeting last month.
If the idea that Kerr and Hodgkinson would go to Paris as serious challengers for gold was clear after Tokyo, then the emergence of others since has been more of a surprise.
Matthew Hudson-Smith has put years of injury woe, not to mention the mental health struggles that had him contemplating suicide, behind him to become the fastest man on the planet over 400m. Molly Caudery is also a world No1, in the pole vault, though her form has dipped a little.
Things have never quite gone right for heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson at the Olympics and she again comes in under something of an fitness cloud, but knowing she can contend after regaining her world title last year.
Jemma Reekie and 17-year-old Phoebe Gill could ensure Hodgkinson is not alone on the 800m podium, while the relays again promise to offer fertile ground.
Laura Muir, the other middle-distance medallist from Tokyo, comes in strangely under the radar, given she broke her own British record over 1500m in this very city only three weeks ago.
