The good news for Robert Harting is that an hour after the discus final starts at the European Athletics Championships in Zurich on Wednesday, the women will line up for the 100m hurdles.
If all goes to plan with Germany’s field-eventer supreme, there may just be a few barriers left out for him to launch his impressive frame over should he retain his title.
Let us not forget the scenes when he took gold at the Olympic Games in London just a few weeks after that European Athletics Championship glory in Helsinki when he went soaring down the home straight, leaping the hurdles, with the national flag draped over his back.
And if Harting, 29, wins again, the lap of honour will be from only the second man in the history of the championships to retain the discus gold medal. The other to have achieved the feat was Italian Adolfo Consolini who won three times in a row - in Oslo in 1946, Brussels in 1950 and Berne in 1954.
At this moment in time, Harting sits second on the European Athletics rankings with 68.47m from Hengelo in June, with his great adversary, Poland’s Piotr Malachowski, leading the lists with 69.28m, and the competition could end up being a duel between the pair of them.
Malachowski, 31, was European champion in Barcelona in 2010 but since then Harting, who was second four years ago, has flexed those huge muscles and monopolised the event. He is now a three-times world champion to go alongside his Olympic and European crown, the latter won in the rain of Helsinki with 68.30m.
Born in Cottbus, gold had eluded him at the major junior events but as he moved up the age ladder, everything changed. His first major title was at the European Athletics U23 Championships in Erfurt in 2005 when he won with 64.50m, a template for the future because the man in silver with 63.99m was Malachowski.
If he keeps his crown, it will come in a year where he has also had to steer his mind away from the sporting arena.
As he told European Athletics after his victory with 67.42m at the European Athletics Team Championships in Braunschweig in June, it is unlikely he will match his 2012 personal best of 70.66m. But with good reason.
Harting said: '70m is the golden line for the discus throwers and this year I would love to do it. But I have been doing a lot of studying, writing and speaking my exams. I study at the University of Arts in Berlin in communication, social and economic content.'
Not that it will affect him at the Letzigrund Stadium because he added: 'I want to hold my title in Zurich but it may be a hard fight again with Piotr.'
Equally, he will not panic if he is not leading the competition after the opening series of throws.
It was in the fourth round in Helsinki where he launched his winning effort before his fifth round distance of 68.27m brought Olympic gold in London and then, last summer at the IAAF World Championships in Moscow, his fourth throw proved decisive again with the gold medal-mark of 69.11m.
Whatever the throw, as long as it's gold for Harting, standby for a celebration to remember.