No Australian swimmer, and very few around the world, has competed at five Olympic Games but Cate Campbell is determined to be the first.
Cate made her Olympic debut in Beijing in 2008, aged 16, and she will be 32 at the time of the Paris 2024 Olympics next year for what could be her last Games.
In that time, she has become one of Australia's most decorated swimmers, and a trailblazer both in and out of the pool. She has anchored Australia's women's 4x100m Freestyle Relay Team to three consecutive Olympic gold medals (for an individual tally of eight Olympic medals, four gold, one silver, three bronze) and is the only common denominator of those three champion teams.
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She has also been the world 100m freestyle champion (2013) and world record-holder (2016) and won countless other international medals. She's achieved all of this despite a litany of injuries and illnesses that would have defeated a lesser character long ago.
Her fourth Olympics, in Tokyo two years ago, was her most successful (two golds and a bronze) but, at 29, she took 18 months off afterwards to consider her future. She wasn't sure she would be back but at the start of this year she decided to climb the mountain one more time.
"It's interesting because during my time off, I didn't miss swimming," she said.
"I didn't miss the daily grind. I didn't miss being tired and sore all the time. I'm completely content with my career in that if I had an injury tomorrow and I couldn't come back, I would obviously be upset, but I could walk away being completely happy with my career, and in that respect it was almost more of a challenge to come back than it was to transition to life after swimming.
"But I also didn't have this sense of knowing that I was done with the sport. I spoke to a lot of retired athletes from a lot of different sports and they said to me that when you know, you know, and I now know that Paris is it. I have planned my life up until Olympic trials, and then hopefully the Olympics, because I believe I have the capability to qualify for that Olympic Team and I have this deep knowing that I have come to the end of a wonderful road.
"I feel that whatever I do now is a bonus because I've achieved almost everything I've ever wanted and a whole lot more and I've had experiences I never dreamed of. It's such a privilege to represent your country and if I can do it one last time, why wouldn't I? It was just that I felt like I hadn't said goodbye to the sport."
But she has no illusions about the difficulty of the task she has set herself. Ironically, she has inspired a generation of younger female sprinters to believe that they can be the best in the world, and now she will have to hold back that wave to claim her place in the national team again.
There will be four individual Olympic or world 100m freestyle champions going for two individual places in the 100m freestyle in Paris. Emma McKeon is the reigning Olympic champion, teenager Mollie O'Callaghan won her second world title in Fukuoka last month, and then there is Cate's sister Bronte Campbell, the 2015 world champion, who will also be striving to contest a fourth Olympic Games. That's not counting the Campbells' former training partner Shayna Jack, who was the silver medallist in the 50m freestyle in Fukuoka in July.
There is more opportunity in the relay, and a high probability of a gold medal waiting in Paris for the members of the women's 4x100m Freestyle Relay, but Cate is not giving herself an easier out.
"I recognise that I'm going to have to perform at my best if not better than my best to a) qualify for the team, and b) stand up among the best in the world, which has always been my goal," she said.
"I've never wanted to just make up numbers on a team, I've always wanted to contribute.
"I inherited (Australia's sprinting legacy) from Libby (Trickett) and Jodie (Henry) and Alice (Tait) and I feel like I've helped drive the women's 100m Freestyle globally. I would say I have the most sub-53sec swims in the world (57) and I helped drive the women's 100m Freestyle to what it is today.
"I've made it harder for myself, but I feel like there might be more to give. This is the first time that I've ever approached a competition knowing that there is no next time, there is no next race, there is no next competition, there is no next preparation, this is it. I'm going to make sure that everything I do is focussed on getting the best performance I can out of myself in Paris."
She will be doing that without her two mainstays, her long-term coach Simon Cusack and her sister Bronte. Cusack has taken a high-performance position off the pool deck, while Bronte has turned to Jodie and Alice's former coach Shannon Rollason in Canberra to guide her campaign.
Cate looked for a solution closer to home in Brisbane. She spent a bit of time with the Rackley club in Brisbane as she regained fitness earlier this year but ultimately decided that Chandler was a better fit for her and she is now training under Maxine Seear - herself an Olympic triathlete.
She admits it is weird not having Bronte by her side everyday but acknowledges that the pressure-cooker of training together was not ideal for their relationship as sisters, even though they were entirely supportive of each other, win or lose.
"There is a part of me that is sad that I'm not going to my last Olympics with her as my training partner, but I think for our relationship it will be much healthier for us to be training apart," Cate said.
"We definitely knew how much pressure there was (on our relationship) and it got higher and higher each year as the stakes got higher, and the external pressures from other athletes coming in to challenge us for our positions. The tension definitely ratcheted up, but in saying that, I think we kept each other incredibly honest. Our performances over years are what they are because we had that direct competition with each other for so long. I'm a bit nervous to see what she can do with Shannon, because he was Simon's mentor, so it's a great move for her."
Cate believes Australia has this embarrassment of riches in female sprinting now because of a change of approach in Swimming Australia's high-performance programme, where a new flexibility has allowed older swimmers to chart their own path into international waters.
"If I wanted to do this (take a long break) at the beginning of my career I don't think there would have been capacity for me to do that within Swimming Australia and the high-performance environment.
"There wasn't an opportunity to take 18 months off and still be supported. I don't think longevity was valued as much in the world of high performance as it is now. I think we thought that swimming was a young person's game whereas we're now valuing more the contribution that older athletes make, not just in terms of performance but in the team environment and team culture.
"I'm extremely grateful to the team at Swimming Australia for their support because it has allowed me to come back to the sport. Swimming Australia have made it very clear that they are there to support me until I walk away from the sport."
Cate stepped back from the leadership group of the Dolphins when she took her break, but instead she has taken on the role of Chair of the AOC Athletes' Commission. It's the type of role she finds rewarding.
"Some of the achievements I'm proudest of are not necessarily the medals, it's working with the Australian Team and helping to form a high-performance culture that is nurturing and caring.
"Some of the teams that I've been on when we've managed to get that culture right, those are things I'm going to look back on and be really proud of. Look at Tokyo (where the swimming team won a record nine gold medals) - I'd say that's one of the best cultures we've managed to put together and it resulted in our best every performance."
She said that the pandemic-induced delay to the Tokyo Games had been a two-edged sword for older swimmers like her, who had to try to maintain their peak for an extra year. However, the three-year turnaround from Tokyo to Paris had been a decisive factor in her decision to go on.
"If it was four years, I don't think I could have done it.
"Knowing that I have 18 months makes it manageable, but if it was longer, I'm not sure I could have done it. I know it's for a finite period and a year and half seems like very small price to give up."
She did not attempt to qualify for the 2023 world championships in Fukuoka because she believed she would benefit more from training than racing at this stage of her comeback. Instead, she intends to reacquaint herself with international competition at the World Cup meets in October before focussing on next year's Olympic trials.
"I don't want to rush the preparation," she said. "For me now, it's all about Paris."