No longer weighed down by the burden of defending her discus title, Dani Samuels is embracing the challenge of getting Australia off to a flying start at the world athletics championships in Moscow on Saturday.
Four years ago in Berlin, Samuels made athletics history by becoming the youngest athlete to win a discus world crown at the age of 21.
She has struggled to back that up in the intervening four years, although a season's best of 64.46m in March - her biggest throw since 2010 - proved the Sydneysider is back to something approaching her very best form.
"Going into Daegu (for the 2011 world titles) I was a nervous, tense wreck," said Samuels, who could manage no better than 10th there, following by a 12th-placed finish at the London Olympics.
"The whole idea of going in as defending champion, that was sort of dominating the whole process and it was just so hard to relax.
"I just felt relief after Daegu - even though I was really, really disappointed, a lot of that was just a massive weight off my shoulders.
"While I was disappointed with my performance in London last year, I just want to throw what I know I can throw - reach my potential and prove to myself that all my hard work this year will pay off."
The red-hot gold-medal favourite will be Croatian Olympic champion Sandra Perkovic, who is unbeaten in eight competitions this year.
But Samuels - who has mixed up her training regime by returning to the basketball court to play alongside her sisters - insists she remains a force to be reckoned with.
"I see competing early in the program as a positive, whereas I used to see it as a negative," said Samuels.
"We have competed on the first two days every year since Daegu and I'm embracing it this year.
"I feel really ready to go."
Samuels was selected for a few NSW representative teams as a junior basketballer, before reluctantly quitting the sport rather than risk an injury which could have jeopardised her athletics career.
But she's returned to the court this year, playing alongside her two sisters for the Hills Hornets in a Sydney competition and reaping the rewards of a more balanced lifestyle.
"I just found I couldn't get as fit as I wanted to by just doing the kind of things that sprinters do," said Samuels.
"Running around playing basketball was great for my agility and my fitness - I haven't been that fit in a couple of years."
The discus qualifying round is on Saturday, with the final scheduled for Sunday (early Monday morning AEST).
Most of the other big guns in the 46-strong Australian team, including world and Olympic 100m hurdles champion Sally Pearson, walker Jared Tallent and javelin thrower Kim Mickle, don't enter the fray until late in the championships.
Collis Birmingham will look to improve on a disappointing major championships record on the track when he contests the 10,000m final on Saturday evening alongside countryman Ben St Lawrence.
Birmingham booked his spot on the Australian squad with an impressive eighth place at the world cross-country championships earlier this year, but has yet to replicate that form on the track in two previous Olympic campaigns over 5000m.
The other Australians competing on day one of the August 10-18 world titles are young 800m runner Alex Rowe, 400m runner Caitlin Sargent and women's marathon quartet Jess Trengove, Lauren Shelley, Jane Fardell and Nikki Chapple.
