Every session, under the watchful eye of her coach Denis Knowles, Dani Stevens says she searches for that perfect throw.
"It's beautiful and it's kind of peaceful," Stevens says.
"My coach has always said it looks like poetry in motion. It just looks so easy and so effortless."
Stevens is training in Sydney's west at a small athletics park, just a few weeks out from the World Championships in London.
Denis watches on as she spins and releases the one kilogram discus. He has coached the 29-year-old since she was eight or nine, he says he can't remember exactly.
"Oh, yes, definitely, she's like a daughter to me. I've got four sons, so she's definitely a daughter," he says.
Stevens' throwing motion, a composition of tension, strength and rhythm, cultivated under his tutelage.
"That movement has become so engrained in me, those habits and that form. It's just part of who I am and I love doing it," Stevens says.
This is what excellence looks like in motion @CommGamesAUS champ @danisamuels in training for next year's Games pic.twitter.com/ocGCoQyRGZ — Darren Mara (@DazzMara) July 20, 2017
2016 was supposed to be Stevens' year. A consistent season saw her travel to the Rio Olympics - her third Games - in fine form and confident of pushing for a first ever medal. But she managed only a fourth.
"If I'd thrown a PB and come fourth I'd have been happy with that but with the shape I was in I felt like I should have thrown a little bit further but that's the Olympics, it's the toughest sporting event on the planet," Stevens says.
Sporting a new married name and new home base, Stevens says, since Rio she's learned that the greatest battle isn't against the other throwers.
It's against the voice inside that tells you to quit.
"Anytime throughout training this year when I've gotten back into it when I've thought this is really hard, or it's kind of been a testing moment, I just think of fourth, and then that animal just comes out in me and says no."
Denis says Stevens is an athlete with something to prove. With the Commonwealth Games on home soil next year, Stevens will be aiming to defend the gold medal she won four years ago in Glasgow.
"We're wanting to have a Commonwealth record, a big throw," Denis says.
But it's redemption at Tokyo 2020 which Stevens covets.
"I've been doing this for a long long time and I know and I desperately want that Olympic gold medal."
