Launceston's Royal Park and the Nambu University Municipal Aquatics Centre in the South Korean city of Gwangju would appear to have little in common.
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But this week they were linked by a smile.
The beaming grin which Ariarne Titmus produced upon landing the biggest win of her record-breaking swimming career on Sunday was unmistakable from the one she displayed in 2009 when first appearing in her home-town newspaper.
Then aged eight, she was pictured with an arm around father Steve as he stood as the Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Bass.
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While Steve's subsequent appearances in The Examiner would be alongside the likes of future Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, his elder daughter's were destined to be dominated by an alternative world of sink-or-swim.
Over the next decade, Titmus would take Tasmanian swimming so deep into uncharted territory that, at just 18, she now ranks alongside the likes of Ricky Ponting, Stephen Hawkins, Peter Hudson, Matthew Wells, Michael Grenda and, more recently Richie Porte, Eddie Ockenden and Jake Birtwhistle as her state's finest sporting products.
Victory at next year's Olympic Games would surely put her top of that tree.
Just five months after the family portrait in Royal Park (which also included mum Robyn and sister Mia) the first of many Titmus pictures taken at the newly-opened Launceston Aquatic Centre shows her sporting a Riverside Aquatic cap already demonstrating her versatility in the water in a 10-and-under individual medley.
Numerous races, medals and state teams followed as the extent of Titmus's ambition and potential began to emerge.
Countless crack-of-dawn training sessions continued, along with a change of club to Launceston Aquatic, as Titmus developed into a distance freestyle specialist under coaches Derek Taylor and Peter Gartrell and became a major blip on the radars of Swimming Tasmania and the Tasmanian Institute of Sport.
She was to share the journey with a bumper crop of emerging Tasmanian talent.
In 2014 she was pictured accepting a sporting scholarship from Andrew Nikolic who had taken the next step from her father by being elected Bass Liberal MHR. Alongside Titmus are fellow swimmer Kit De Jonge, cyclists Morgan Gillon, Zack Gilmore and Anya Louw and cricketer/footballer Courtney Webb who were all on course to make headlines of their own.
Teammates in state swimming squads included other promising talents like Morgen Hawkins, Freya Jetson, Will Bonney and Emily Lonergan but the Titmus trajectory always appeared to be heading highest and an invitation to a camp at the Australian Institute of Sport suggested national recognition was not far away.
In November 2014, she was recognised at The Examiner's Junior Sports Awards (at which fellow future Commonwealth Games champion Birtwhistle was guest speaker) and a few months later she helped St Patrick's College to a clean sweep of shields at the Northern Sports Association of Tasmanian Independent Schools swimming carnival.
But bigger stages were waiting and in mid-2015, after claiming 200, 400 and 800m freestyles titles all in Tasmanian open records at the national age championships, 14-year-old Titmus and her family made the decision to relocate to Queensland to pursue her swimming dream.
"The regrets in life are not what you did, but what you didn't do and we want to give, not just Ariarne, but also her sister Mia, the best opportunities in life, not just in sport but for their future education and working careers," Steve told The Examiner.
She moved to Brisbane to continue training with Gartrell before blossoming under Dean Boxall at St Peters Western.
She made her first national team within a year and didn't look back.
World championships soon followed with fourth (800m) and sixth (400m) places in Canada in 2016; a bronze medal in the 4x200m freestyle relay and fourth in the 400m in Hungary in 2017; before a breakthrough double gold at the 2018 short-course titles in China over 200 and 400m - the latter in a new world record.
Three golds (400m, 800m, 4x200m relay) and one silver (200m) followed at last year's Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, plus a gold (4x200m relay) and two silvers (400 and 800m) at the Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo.
The last two of those results came in finishing second to American sensation Katie Ledecky from whose wake Titmus finally emerged on Sunday night.
With 14 world, five Olympic and eight Pan Pacific titles to her name, Ledecky had not lost a major race since 2012, when Titmus was 11, and holds world records over 400, 800 and 1500m.
The pair are expected to be reunited in Tokyo next year where Titmus would continue a proud record.
Already one of just four Australians to hold a 400m world record - along with Lorraine Crapp, Shane Gould and Tracey Wickham - she appears set to extend her home state's Olympic swimming achievements.
John Hayes (1956), current Launceston Aquatic coach Peter Tonkin (1964), Audrey Youl, Brett Stocks (both 1984) and Scott Goodman (1996) all competed at Olympic Games with Goodman and Tonkin winning bronze medals, while Melissa Carlton (1996 and 2000) and Jacob Templeton (2016) contested Paralympics.
A victory in Tokyo would make Titmus Tasmania's first individual Olympic champion and settle any lingering debate about her home state's greatest ever athlete.
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