It is a privilege to be given the responsibility of overseeing the preparation and delivery of a world championship in any sport but there is a downside - there’s no opportunity to join in the celebration when athletes from your country enjoy great success within them.
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Maybe a quiet hidden fist-pump and certainly accepting the handshake congratulations that inevitably come, however appropriate, from those from other nations.
But not much more.
And so it was when Sally Pearson defied just about all the odds and almost every statistic on paper to win another major gold medal at the IAAF World Championships in London last weekend.
The victory was an exceptional performance from an athlete whose focus and drive is almost unique – perhaps because it is possible that somewhere out there in another event in track and field or in another sport there is another like Sally.
But surely not many.
As Sally McLellan, the die was already cast when at just 14, she won the national under-20, 100 metres championship.
Within two years she was world under-18 champion in the hurdles and had run the relay in Paris in the senior version.
The next three years demonstrated developing talent and steady progress but there was nothing really special.
The Commonwealth Games in Melbourne could have provided a launching pad but instead delivered a disqualification. A relay bronze was a small consolation.
But in September that year, just two days before her 20th birthday, Pearson broke 13 seconds for the 100-metre hurdles to finish fourth in the World Cup in Athens.
This was maybe the moment when she truly believed there was a place for her at the very top.
Two years later perhaps to all but herself there was a surprise silver medal at the Beijing Olympics - behind Dawn Harper who, as it happens, last weekend stood on the dais on Pearson’s right shoulder.
The first real injury blip interrupted the Pearson juggernaut of success briefly in 2009, but thereafter until 2014 the times and medals just kept coming.
The London Olympics were the crowning glory in the middle of all that – but as last week revealed even that was not enough for the Gold Coast girl’s obsession with success.
Injuries and a serious competition crash held up the process massively from 2015 on.
There were partings of the way with coaches, and the need for patience not normally a Pearson virtue in returning to top-level competition.
This year’s Australian Championships provided the assurance to both the athlete and those looking on that she was back, but few of the latter would have contemplated another gold medal at the highest level.
Athletes can be motivated by all sorts of things, but it was clear when Sally twice ran the hurdles at July’s Diamond League meeting in London that its Olympic Stadium provided some sort of special comfort to her.
Two weeks on in Monaco her performance was steady but not spectacular by any means.
But for those who have long observed this champion’s path to success, it was easy to rationalise that a correction of a technical glitch here and there would leave her ready for the return to London.
A medal was, by then, virtually a certainty – but a gold? Kendra Harrison was two-tenths faster and had set the world record in the same stadium 12 months before.
The other Americans shared the spoils on the circuit and with four of them allowed to compete, were an ominous presence.
But all of that denies the special and steely determination of Pearson.
If, after 2012 there was ever any doubt, now clearly among the most golden of Australia’s Golden Girls of athletics.
And not by any means to overlook the fine discus silver medal and Oceania record to Dani Samuels.
She joins Pearson in an elite group of Australians who leave little to chance to deliver success.