After a year which has fluctuated at times in bewildering fashion, Mark Carroll is ready to apply himself to the task of winning his first international senior championship at Ghent.
Carroll, fated to toil in the slipstream of other more consistent athletes from Cork, goes to the starting line for the semi-finals of the European 3,000 metres indoor championship this evening in the certain knowledge that he has some hard running to do if he is to secure one of the automatic places in Sunday's final.
On the face of it, that ought not present him with insuperable problems; and yet, looking at the graph of his chequered career, it may be unwise to presume too much.
At his best, Carroll is a truly world-class athlete, a point first acknowledged after he had won a European junior title some years ago, and then surprised, possibly even himself, by winning a bronze medal at 5,000 metres at the last European outdoor championships at Budapest in 1998.
That is the pedigree of an athlete capable of anything when he gets it right on the day, a point illustrated in his seasonal best of seven minutes 46.42 seconds at Stockholm earlier in the month.
The other side of the coin is that he can slump when least expected. After that excellent Stockholm performance and an equally big run to win the Wanamaker Mile in New York's Madison Square Garden, he went to the national indoor championships at Nenagh a week last Sunday with every chance of winning the 800 metre title.
In the event, he was comprehensively beaten by James Nolan after a naive tactical race in which he was hopelessly trapped at the back when Nolan made his big break 120 metres out.
Hopefully he can profit from that error and stay alert to cover all moves when the second semi-final of the 3,000 metres builds to a climax this evening.
The Irishman arrived here on Wednesday to discover that his task had been complicated by the decision of the brilliant Portuguese athlete, Rui Silva, to run the 3,000 rather than the 1,500 as some expected.
Silva won the 1,500 metre title in these championships two years ago and but for bad luck in catching the heel of an athlete in front of him, might well have won the outdoor championship in Seville last August.
Going strictly on the clock this season, the Portuguese runner is class apart in 3,000 metre competition. Running in Stuttgart three weeks ago, he crossed the line in seven minutes 39.44 seconds, some six seconds faster than Carroll's career best figures.
That suggests the Irishman will be running for the silver medal here, but it is widely accepted that he is capable of getting close to the 7:40.00 mark when he calls the shots right. Hopefully that will be the case in the semi-finals in which he will be opposed among others by the defending champion, John Mayock of Britain.
Mayock, soundly beaten by Gareth Turnbull in the Durham crosscountry grand prix meeting last month, has been running some way below his best this season and in those circumstances the biggest threat to the Irishman may emanate from Harald Steindorfer of Austria and Mohammed Mourhit of Belgium.
Silva, it seems, has merely to avoid trouble to win the first semi-final in which he is some nine seconds faster on the clock this season than his main rival, Gennaro Di Napoli, of Italy. The other big focal point for the Irish today will be the performance of James Nolan in the second semi-final of the men's 1,500 metres.
With Silva out of contention, only the Spaniard, Jose Redolat, has run faster than Nolan at the distance this season, and then the margin is measured only in fractions.
Going on his fluent performance at Nenagh and his earlier achievement in running Carroll close in the Wanamaker Mile, Nolan should qualify comfortably in a race in which the first three plus the three fastest losers will go through to the final.
The naturalised Frenchman, Medhi Baala, has superior career best figures to the Irishman, but this season is a fifth of a second slower and apparently not getting any quicker in the approach to the championships.
Gareth Turnbull runs in the first 1,500 metre semi-final, but his seasonal best of three minutes 44.06 seconds leaves him with a huge task to reach the final.
To do so, he must find significant improvement to test the Spaniard, Juan Higuero, and Luis Feiteira of Portugal. And then he must also legislate for the threat of the Pole, Piotr Rostkowski, in a race dominated by the championship favourite, Redolat.
Earlier in the day, Ciara Sheehy, will have been in action in the heats of the women's 200 metres, but it requires a lot of optimism to give her a realistic chance of going through to the semi-finals later in the day.
One imagines that Karen Shinkins's hopes of progress in the 400 metres will be considerably brighter. The Kildare athlete, maturing all the time, produced a career best performance of 52.85 seconds when winning in Athens two weeks ago and judged on that performance, should have little problems in finishing in the first three in the second of three heats.
Sinead Delahunty is the most experienced member of the Irish squad, but judging on her unconvincing run at Nenagh, her best hope of progressing to the finals of the 1,500 metres may be in securing one of the places for the three fastest losers.
Delahunty's seasonal best of four minutes 11.06 seconds puts her fourth fastest of eight in the second semi-final in which the Russian, Yuila Kosenkova, would appear to be out of reach of the opposition after a recent run of four minutes 6.07 seconds.
