Ciaran McDonagh, a relatively new name in a distinctly old event, is set to stoke the embers of a proud Irish tradition in Seville's Olympic Stadium today.
Unheralded until now, McDonagh has arrived in the world long jump championship final with every prospect of shaking a few established reputations on his first major overseas assignment.
On the debit side, the element of surprise he took into the preliminaries of the competition on Thursday has now been lost. The bonus is that after the first eight metre jump ever by an Irishman had put him among the top five qualifiers, his confidence is burgeoning.
"It's a great feeling to achieve a personal best in a competition like this," he said. "My priority coming out here was to qualify for a place in the final and now that I've achieved it, I'm ready to go again.
"This is far and away the biggest experience of my career but I still don't feel any extra pressure. That goes with being a big name athlete and I don't fit that category."
Not since an historic day at the RDS in 1903 when Peter O'Connor jumped 24-ft 11 and three-quarter inches for a world record which lasted more than 20 years has a long jump competition generated as much interest in Irish athletics.
In sharp contrast to the vast majority of his team-mates here, McDonagh gets no state funding and no medical expenses. And for an athlete who has spent much of the last three years recuperating from injuries, that is a serious omission.
His only income during that time derived from a part-time post at the NACA's headquarters in Navan but, undaunted, he still summoned the resources and the commitment to develop his impressive potential which first surfaced in underage competitions.
The fact that he has achieved so much working with his Polish born coach Dr Zbigniew Orywal is the re-assuring evidence that elaborate back-up facilities are not always essential to the flowering of a special talent. More important, by far, is the zeal to go on working on that talent at times when the temptation is to find a lesser demanding discipline.
With established performers of the quality of Cuba's Ivan Pedroso, Gregor Cankar (Slovakia) and, not least, the local hero Yago Lamela who has cleared 8.56 metres this season, dominating the line up, McDonagh will be doing well to finish in the top eight today.
The real success of the man, however, is the character which has enabled him to overcome adversity and create a new level of awareness in an event which has for too long languished at the bottom of the pile in Irish athletics.
A second focal point for the Irish today will be the performance of Mark Carroll in the men's 5,000 metres final. Ireland's input into the world ratings in this event has waned considerably since Eamonn Coghlan won the inaugural event at Helsinki in 1983.
Carroll's splendid run to secure the bronze medal in last year's European Championships in Budapest was a timely boost. Yet, on the evidence of Thursday's preliminaries in which he qualified only as one of the fastest losers, he has significant improvement to find now if he is to get anywhere close to a medal.
Success stories in these championships, it has to be stressed, have occasionally been scripted in even more unlikely circumstances. But it still requires a broad sweep of the imagination to give Carroll a realistic chance of finishing ahead of Salah Hissou (Morocco), Daniel Koeman (Kenya) and Belgium's Mohammed Mourhit who won his semi-final race with plenty to spare.
James Nolan had no excuses to offer after finishing seventh of eight in the first semi-final of the 800 metres championship yesterday in a time of 1.47.07. Swept away by Adem Hecini's opening charge, Nolan was running at the back of the field almost throughout and never threatened those in front of him.
An intermediate time of 52.08, the slowest of the three semi-finals, was still far too much for the UCD runner who, it seemed, hadn't fully recovered from the effects of his punishing run in the heats.
"Although I don't feel as tired now as I did after my first race, I didn't run fluently," he said. "I'm a small bit disappointed but I take some consolation from the fact that Vebjorn Rodal, the Olympic champion in Atlanta, didn't even survive the heats. On balance, I can't complain for its been the most successful year of my career to date."
Terry McHugh, nearing the end of a distinguished career in javelin throwing, was close to his seasonal best with figures of 77.23 metres. This was little more than a metre short of his qualification throw at Tullamore but still left him 10th of 14 starters in Group A of the preliminaries.
The list was headed predictably by the vastly experienced Czechoslovakian thrower Jan Zelezny who got out to 84.31 metres for a clear lead over Germany's Raymond Hecht.
McHugh still hasn't abandoned hope of competing at the Olympic Games in Sydney but stressed the need for those controlling the purse strings to give due consideration to the athletes specialising in technical events.
For Elaine Fitzgerald, there was a chastening introduction to big time competition when unnerved, it seemed, by the pressures of it all, she could finish only 11th in her heat of the 1,500 metres. Toiling to go with the pace from the off, she finished in a disappointing 4.12.77, some seven seconds behind the winner, Regina Jacobs of the United States.
And her fate was shared in the 20 kilometres walk by Gillian O'Sullivan who started conservatively and was eventually timed at 1:40.33 in 32nd place in a race dominated by the Chinese representatives, Hingyu Liu and Yan Wang.
