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Nick Willis
A refreshed Nick Willis is confident his "improvement curve is still on the way up" as the 1500m star plots to turn silver into gold at the London Olympics in August.
Last year was underwhelming by Willis' high standards as the Hutt Valley product faded badly to finish last in September's world championships final in South Korea.
But Willis - back home in New Zealand for a part holiday, part training stint - is well over the disappointment of Daegu and draws optimism from the fact that two months before the world champs he ran a personal best of 3min 31.79sec in Monaco.
"So that's the most satisfying part; despite my not so good performances at world championships I ran my personal best, so I know that the improvement curve is still on the way up," the 28-year-old said.
"So as long as I can stay healthy and get in some good training, there's no reason to believe that improvement won't continue. I would dearly love that [another Olympic medal], but there's still a long way to go and it really depends on how my training goes over the next three months.
"What I do February, March, April, May will really determine what my chances are. I've had some good fortune and some awful [2010 knee surgery] lately but I'd love to put myself up there."
The United States-based Willis and his American wife Sierra saw in the new year in the Bay of Islands with family before relocating to Wellington "with a stop-off in the Redwoods for a run".
Canny coach Ron Warhurst hasn't joined Willis in New Zealand as he starts his training regime but his brother, Steve, is back on board and has taken the stopwatch.
British training partner Lee Emanuel has arrived in Wellington and US stars Will Leer and Brandon Bethke join Team Willis on Monday.
The quartet will compete in the Cooks Classic in Whanganui next Friday as well as the International Track Meet on the grass track at Christchurch's Christ's College on February 4.
Willis, whose memorable run for bronze in Beijing in 2008 became silver when gold medallist Rashid Ramzi tested positive for a banned substance, has a keen awareness of his own place in Kiwi athletics history.
So the Cooks Classic event, marking the 50th anniversary of Peter Snell's world record 3min 54.4sec mile in 1962, holds plenty of significance.
"Although we're not in our best shape we're going to be giving it our best," Willis said.
"It's awesome to think back when one of our own was the very best in the world and absolutely dominated the world news, in the sports realm at least, for those weeks.
"It's pretty cool to be able to celebrate that achievement 50 years later. And the time - we most likely won't end up bettering it this summer so that just shows how incredible Peter Snell was."
But the main focus of Willis' homecoming is getting as fit as possible, hammering the Hutt Valley hills and the Newtown Park track.
He says he is completely niggle-free and enters this Olympic campaign a lot more relaxed than four years ago, when he was a "kid" desperate to announce himself to the world.
"Back then I was yet to prove to myself that I was worthy of contending for a medal, so I went to the world indoor championships in March to get a taste for that. But this year I'm not going to bother with that. So it's a little bit more relaxed, you can't be intense the whole year around so it's been really good and I'm starting to come into reasonable form."
The worldwide depth in the 1500m continues to grow but that will thin out come London with each country only allowed to field a maximum of three athletes in each event.
That affects the running factory that is Kenya, in particular.
"Kenya are really dominating the top-30 lists but they can only have three at the games. But of course those three will be incredibly good and definitely a very great challenge. But as I was fortunate enough to experience [at Beijing], and likewise an American guy at these past world championships [Matthew Centrowitz], there's always young kids that have a chance to upset the favourites and get on the podium."
