After letting go of her world championships relay pain, Alicia Coutts was able to get back to doing what she does best.
Winning medals and plenty of them.
After initially feeling she had cost her 4x100m freestyle teammates gold in a narrow opening-night defeat to the US, Coutts rebounded strongly to claim two more silver medals in Barcelona on Monday.
It took Australia's iron woman of the pool's medal haul to a remarkable 19 at international long course events since 2010.
That collection includes five medals at last year's London Olympics and Coutts already has three in Spain, with several more on offer.
She broke down in tears after being overtaken in the final stages of the relay defeat, but a chat with coach John Fowlie helped Coutts put things in perspective ahead of another gruelling day.
"I had five races in the one day and I was very tired and feeling very emotional and to just get touched out by that (margin), I was disappointed for my team," Coutts said.
"It wasn't until after when I spoke to my coach that he said to me that was the fastest relay split I've ever done.
"He was really proud of what I'd done and my team was proud of me that I was able to back up after the two semi-finals, so it's sort of made me feel a lot better.
"I didn't sleep too well last night but I managed to get up tonight and do the best I could.
"... I guess there's not that many people that could probably do what I did (backing up so quickly) and I'm proud of myself."
Coutts clocked 56.97 seconds to finish second in Monday's 100m butterfly final, behind impressive Swede Sarah Sjostrom (56.53) and ahead of Olympic champion Dana Vollmer (57.24)
The 25-year-old then backed up for her seventh race in two days to claim another second placing the 200m individual medley final, clocking 2:09.39 behind Hungarian Katinka Hosszu (2:07.92).
Coutts held on for silver from fast-finishing Spaniard Mireia Belmonte Garcia despite, understandably, having little left in the tank.
"I literally gave that race everything I had," Coutts said.
"I gritted my teeth as much as a could and that's all I had left tonight."
Coutts is now looking forward to two days off before resuming a campaign, which will include several more relay swims and the 50m butterfly.
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