Ah. This was the girl we used to know long ago, fire in the brown eyes and a hunger for battle in the hard skillet of her stomach. Sonia O'Sullivan bossed the field in the first heat of the 5,000 metres here in Homebush Bay last night, then bounded off the track and bossed the media.
Having pounded out the best qualifying time of the night (15:07:91), she came into the mixed zone, scene of so many unmixed emotions four years ago in Atlanta and put order on the media scrum. "Three minutes down this end. A minute there. Then I have to go and jog."
For seasoned Sonia-watchers the breezy certainty was as reassuring as the confidence with which she had just run. She enters Monday's final in perfect frame of mind, having given herself as good a chance of winning as possible. Given the right race on Monday, anything is possible.
"It was a good hard run tonight," she said. "It was something like a training session. It hasn't taken too much out of me."
What impressed most last night was the patience of O'Sullivan's running during the race and the timeliness with which she unleashed her finishing kick on the final bend.
In recent times she has found concentration a problem in longer races and lapses in focus have cost her dear. This time she stayed with a leading pack of five runners until the time was right and then switched gears.
"I was always up there, always feeling good and looking forward. The race went quickly - sometimes I feel the time going by slowly and it's hard to concentrate. I hadn't planned to go out and win at all costs, I just found myself in that position. All of a sudden I'm in front. Qualifying automatically in the first four is the perfect situation."
The race yielded some confirmation of the success of a strategy which O'Sullivan has pursued this season, laying down the heavy distance work earlier in her schedule and then spending the past couple of months competing in shorter races, working on her speed over the final 200 metres. Last night nobody could keep up when she moved away from the field on the last bend.
Sonia has been living and training for the past couple of weeks in a rented house in suburban Sydney, near Botany Bay. With her are her partner, Nick Bideau, and her daughter, Ciara. Training has been wound down, and days are passed at the beach and with the odd run in the park. After the disasters of Atlanta four years ago the approach to Sydney has been insistently downbeat and relaxed. Yesterday was a test.
"I was pretty nervous all day, I suppose. I'll have to go and ask Alan [Storey, her coach] and Nick how I was to be with. I walked up and down the stairs 10 times, put my gear in the bag and checked that I had my running shoes in there 10 times. I said goodbye to Ciara when she went off for a stroll at lunchtime.
"After that I just wanted to get warmed up and get it done. It was good. Out there we were on the start line for quite a while and you just knew you were in the Olympic stadium."
She didn't lack support: the immense Stadium Australia was dotted with Irish flags and the roar which greeted her move to the front on the last lap was second only to that which greets Australian runners.
"I enjoyed it. The race went right. I felt good. It hasn't taken anything out of me. That's what I wanted from the heat."
And so she dissolved our quorum. Time up. She departed, small haversack on her back, away for a warm-down jog and a massage from Ger Hartigan. She looked tough striding through the corridors of the stadium.
Last week running in the park wearing a pair of silver wraparound sunglasses she was attacked by magpies trying to peck at the frames. A passerby batted the birds off and Sonia ran on. She forgot to do a headcount on her feathery assailants to see whether it was one for sorrow or two for joy. Monday will tell.