On November 18, 2014, at Country Club Tasmania, junior triathlon world champion Jake Birtwhistle presented The Examiner's female individual junior sports award to a St Patrick's College and Launceston Aquatic Club swimmer who was already entering uncharted waters for her sport in Tasmania.

The following year, the Titmus family moved to Brisbane and two years later Ariarne was medalling at world championships. World records and titles soon followed.

In 2018 she was reunited with Birtwhistle in the Australian team for the Commonwealth Games - making the short trip home from Gold Coast back to Brisbane with four medals, three of them gold.

The two former patrons of Riverside Aquatic Centre were back together again earlier this year as the delayed Olympic Games finally went ahead in Tokyo.

But while Birtwhistle's maiden Olympic experience left him with a broken nose and disappointing results - largely due to a shambolic false start inflicted by inept organisation - Titmus's Games could not have gone much better.

Defeating nemesis and 15-time world champion Katie Ledecky in the 400-metre freestyle, Titmus doubled up with another gold in the 200m, happily settled for silver in the American's preferred distance of 800m and added a bronze in the 4x200m relay to complete her second major multi-sport Games with another four-medal haul.

A couple of months later, Titmus returned to her home state to share her success with those who helped her start out and accept proud recognition in the form of a key to the City of Launceston and the newly-named Ariarne Titmus pool at Launceston Aquatic Centre.

And on Wednesday night the 21-year-old will come full circle as guest speaker at this year's edition of The Examiner's Junior Sports Awards.

In the same room where she listened to Birtwhistle's words of wisdom, Titmus will deliver a similar tale of Tasmanian triumph on a global scale - albeit virtually via a live link, as is the way in a COVID world.

The former Riverside and Launceston Aquatic Club member returns as the reigning Tasmanian athlete of the year and hot favourite to retain the title having last week been named as a finalist alongside 2013 winner and Tour de France podium finisher Richie Porte, Olympic silver medal-winning Kookaburras Josh Beltz and 2014 winner Eddie Ockenden plus North-West middle distance running sensations Stewart McSweyn and Deon Kenzie.

Although probably the highest profile, Titmus is far from the only junior sports award winner to make the transition from budding junior to successful senior.

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Joining her in an elite class of 2014, Courtney Webb went on to tick both AFLW and WBBL boxes, Bailey Groves also gave the Tokyo Olympics his best shot and Amy Halaby won TSLW flags with Launceston.

Previous finalists have gone on to achieve international success in sports as diverse as mountain biking, weightlifting and athletics while Jarrod Freeman and Emma Manix-Geeves joined Webb on the national cricket arena and Jackson Callow and Tarryn Thomas both graduated through to the AFL.

With previous guest speakers also including Test cricket captains Ricky Ponting and Tim Paine, AFL footballers Nathan Grima and Sam Lonergan, Olympic runners Tristan Thomas and Milly Clark, rowers Scott Brennan, Ali Foot and Anthony Edwards and cyclists Richie Porte, Wes Sulzberger and Georgia Baker, there has been no shortage of Tasmanian achievers providing sage advice.

It has become almost inevitable that some of those finalists listening to Titmus's life story on Wednesday night may be inspired to attempt to emulate her achievements.

She has set the bar rather high.