Valerie Adams had her first Olympic appearance as a 19-year-old on the hollowest of hollowed turfs.
The Athens shot put event in 2004 took place at the historic Olympia Stadium, the famed birthplace of the Games.
"It's just a patch of grass and I train on a patch of grass in Howick," Adams famously said on the eve of her Olympic debut.
"I got here not knowing much about it at all but just walking through the archway ... is just an incredible feeling," she later said after finishing a respectable eighth.
So began what is one of New Zealand's greatest Olympic careers with another chapter to be added to it in Tokyo.
Here we chart Adams' career from her first attempt in Athens to the Rio Olympics five years ago.