17th September 2013 11:00
Many have secured their targets, reached their peaks, won their medals; other have not produced as hoped and will now go away to contemplate how to return in 2014 being able to run that bit faster, jump just that bit higher or throw that bit quicker.
But by the middle of September, few, if any, are in a position where they have just produced their performance of the season.
It is at this stage the story turns to the remarkable Barbora Spotakova, the Olympic javelin champion, because on Friday in Domazlice, the Czech Republic star moved to 12th on the European Athletics rankings with a little reminder to those rivals heading for a sunny beach that she is back.
Spotakova has not competed this summer for glorious personal reasons. In May, she gave birth to her son Janek and at the time it was reported she wanted to start training again in October to prepare for next summer's major event - the European Athletics Championships in Zurich.
But just 113 days since becoming a mum, Spotakova was not only competing, she was throwing with such quality that the rankings tables that are about to close for the summer have to find room for a major new entry.
And what a moment to choose to return - September 13 - exactly five years to the day when she threw the world record of 72.28m in Stuttgart.
But this time her 62.33m was arguably just as significant because it arrived, as she revealed, without any major training. When that starts in earnest, she will be out there with such fresh impetus after this display that the women's javelin, which has brought such outstanding performances from Germany's Christina Obergfoll and Russia's Mariya Abakumova this year, has a new excitement to it in the countdown to Zurich.
Even now lies the prospect of one of the best summers ever for the women's javelin, which could all come to a head at the European Athletics Championships.
Friday was a great day, too, for Obergfoll who was married to her coach and former javelin star Boris Henry, just a few weeks after winning her first world title in Moscow.
Her success came in a summer where she earned another outstanding honour by becoming the only competitor in the history of the European Athletics Team Championships to have won at all four meetings after her victory in Gateshead, let alone soaring glory in the IAAF Diamond race.
But it is Abakumova who remains at the top of the European Athletics rankings after throwing 70.53m in Berlin at the start of this month as she ended the summer in brilliant style and would probably wished her season had begun later such was the form she showed.
Neither of the trio have won the European title - with Spotakova being the bronze medalist in Göteborg in 2006 and the silver medalist in Barcelona in 2010.
Obergfoll has two silvers - from Barcelona and then Helsinki last summer – while Abakumova’s best was fifth in 2010.
Come Zurich, Vira Rebryk, of the Ukraine, will be the defending champion while Germany’s Linda Stahl, who won gold in Barcelona, will be in the running too.
But with that effort of 62.33m, it is Spotakova who has left the rest with something to think about as those long, winter months loom.