“In London we had a bus driver who did not know where he was going and got lost,” Kerry Hore recalled.

“You can’t do anything about it, so what’s the point getting upset about something you cannot control?”

It is a priceless tip that was shared by her fellow Tasmanian rower and frequent national teammate Scott Brennan.

Faced with an annoying hour-long, sweaty commute through heavy traffic to the Beijing rowing course, Brennan and his double scull crewmate Dave Crawshay turned the inconvenience into an opportunity, believing that two-hour daily grind was their chance to step back from the stress of competition.

While their teammates and rivals got frustrated and flustered, Brennan and Crawshay listened to music, surfed the internet, slept and generally seized an unexpected chance to chill out.

The policy helped lead to what remains Tasmania’s only gold medal since 2004.

‘‘After a while you know what’s important and are better at dealing with other things whether it’s travel hassles or media commitments or whatever,” added Hore, who this week became the only female Australian rower to compete at four Olympic Games.

‘‘I’ve seen people get really stressed about things like their uniform being the wrong size, but really, as long as you’ve got a suit to row in, who cares if your sleeves are a bit too long?

“It will be good to tell the young girls not to worry about such things. I feel well equipped to focus on the important things.”

Twelve years after she was 12 years younger than the oldest member of her Olympic crew, Hore finds herself the oldest by 12 years and such words of wisdom will do as much to assist her three debutant crewmates as 12 hours on an ergo machine.

In an era when sports gurus are obsessed with controlling the controllables, it is ultimately the uncontrollables that can dictate an athlete’s fate.

Those Tasmanians competing in Brazil, and indeed those that missed out, have faced and dealt with all manner of adversity in the way of their sporting ambitions.

Seven years ago, Richie Porte flew to Italy to try his luck at professional cycling with little more than a passport and a dream. Last month, he was a puncture away from the Tour de France podium.

Meaghan Volker’s Rio door slammed shut when her women’s eight crew failed to finish in the top two in the final selection regatta. A fortnight ago, a cheating Russian reopened it for them.

In 1999, Tim Deavin’s hockey career almost ended prematurely when he suffered a depressed skull fracture.

A couple of years later, his future Kookaburras teammate Eddie Ockenden spent six weeks in ICU with a ruptured kidney sustained in a state representative match.

Perversely, the form surge that saw Georgia Baker storm into team pursuit contention coincided with the loss of her father - the cyclist explaining how she channelled the anger and frustration of helplessness into training harder.

Milly Clark’s long and winding road from Launceston to Rio de Janeiro has detoured through Sydney, Germany, Indonesia and Iowa.

And there can be few harder hard luck stories than that of Jake Birtwhistle who since controversially missing qualification to the Games has defeated the three triathletes selected ahead of him.

As Hore’s anecdote reveals, it is how athletes deal with the unexpected that could be key to their prospects.

Another example comes from Brennan who turned to running and mountain biking when wrist and back issues prevented him from rowing during his injury-hit career.

Those athletes looking for excuses in Rio will not have to work hard.

Each will have heard plenty of negativity surrounding crime, infrastructure, pollution and the Zika virus, none of which they can do much about.

Indeed, golfers seem to have been queuing up to pull out over the Zika issue even though it is also prevalent in Florida but strangely none appear to be pulling out of the myriad of lucrative tournaments there.

Where success may be elusive, excuses can be plentiful.

Which leads to another moral from the retired Brennan, whose Olympic interest in Brazil will be hoping his wife Kim can repeat the form that has made her a two-time single sculls world champion and improve on the silver and bronze medals she won in London.

No journey to the top is ever without hurdles, it’s how you deal with those hurdles that determines whether you make it.

Australia’s most famous hurdler may be absent, but 11 Tasmanians are in the process of learning whether they can clear their own obstacles.