After just missing out on a medal at the Rio Olympics, she now has next year's Commonwealth Games firmly in view.
She aims to use the event on Queensland's Gold Coast as a stepping stone to Olympic redemption.
"Better. That's a good release, Dani. First one was a bit ... bit high."
Every session, under the watchful eye of coach Denis Knowles, Dani Stevens searches for that perfect throw.
"It's beautiful, and it's kind of peaceful, and my coach has always said it looks like poetry in motion. It just looks so easy and so effortless."
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Stevens is training in Sydney's west, at a small athletics park.
Denis Knowles watches on as she spins and releases the one-kilogram discus.
(Stevens:) "That had some hang time, but it was a bit weird." (laughs ...)
(Knowles:) "I don't care how weird it looks if it goes the right way, Dani. That's good. Well done."
Knowles has coached the 29-year-old since she was eight or nine years old -- he cannot quite remember.
She says her throwing motion, a composition of tension, strength and rhythm, has been cultivated under his tutelage.
"That movement has become so ingrained in me, those habits and that form, that it's just part of who I am, and I love doing it."
2016 was supposed to be Stevens' year.
A consistent season led her to the Rio Olympics, her third Games, in fine form and confident of pushing for a first-ever medal.
But she managed only a disappointing fourth, failing to reach a personal best. (PB)
"If I'd thrown a PB and come fourth, I would have been happy with that, but, with the shape that I was in, I felt like I should have thrown a little bit further. But, you know, that's the Olympics. It's the toughest sporting event on the planet."
Now, sporting a new married name and a new home base, Stevens has a fresh enthusiasm for success.
Since Rio, she says, she has learned the greatest battle is not against the other throwers.
She says it is against the voice inside that tells you to quit.
"Anytime throughout training this year when I've gotten back into it that I've thought, 'Aw, this is really hard,' or it's kind of been a testing moment, I just think of, 'Fourth.' And then that animal just comes out in me and thinks ... and says, 'No!'"
And with the Commonwealth Games on home soil next year, Stevens will be aiming to defend the gold medal she won four years ago in Glasgow.
Knowles says she is an athlete with something to prove.
"We're wanting to have a Commonwealth record, a big throw."
But it is redemption at Tokyo 2020, the next Olympics, that Stevens really covets.
"I've been doing this for a long, long time, and I know, and I desperately want that Olympic gold medal."
