Australian swimmer Cam McEvoy has been here before: a gold-medal favourite at the Olympics.
But this time in Paris, McEvoy says he's a far different person than when his Rio Olympics turned sour eight years ago.
Then, McEvoy was favourite to win the men's 100m freestyle but finished seventh.
Now, he enters the 50m freestyle in Paris as favourite after a semi-final win on Thursday night.
"Where I am now as a person and an athlete, very different (to Rio)," the 30-year-old said.
"The biggest thing is just understanding that the whole context is different, both in terms of in the Olympics and during the comp and also the whole preparation leading up to it.
"So just reminding myself of the difference in context and how that flows in to just being able to execute what I can.
"All my training is around repeatability and repeatability at the speeds I need to be at, so just really having trust in that and remembering where I am.
"Two years ago, I wouldn't have said I'd be here, let alone in the position I'm in now. So being grateful for that."
McEvoy and Great Britain's Ben Proud were equal fastest through the semi-finals at the Paris La Defense Arena, both clocking 21.38 seconds.
The super-smart McEvoy, who studies physics in the hope of becoming an astronaut, took a break from swimming after the Tokyo Games.
He returned with a revolutionary training regime: while focused on technical minutia in the pool, he does rock climbing and calisthenics among other activities to retain fitness.
But the swimmer nicknamed The Professor, who spent much of his five-day wait to race in Paris watching Big Bang Theory on Netflix, now has to shelve one trait: an intense focus on what times he posts.
"We have seen it many times here, the finals are not so much the fastest ones (races), it's hand on the wall first," McEvoy said.
"I am very time-orientated. But this time around I just need to be process oriented, just hand on the wall as well as I can - that's it.
"The 50, it's so technically critical to get everything right but I'm not going in there expecting I am going to nail everything.
"Just do it as best I can, hand on the wall as best I can, and fingers-crossed."
