It is that time of year again, to vote for Europe’s best athletes of 2015.
The European Athletics Golden Tracks is awarded to the men’s and women’s European Athletes of the Year and Rising Stars and it has been another sensational 12 months.
The Golden Tracks trophy will be awarded at a televised gala evening in Lausanne on Saturday 17 October and the voting will close on Monday 28 September.
Over the next eight days we shall be profiling all the 40 nominees, with your chance to vote through our Facebook and Twitter pages.
Today we begin with Zuzana Hejnova, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Sergey Shubenkov and Greg Rutherford.
Click here to see the full list of nominees.
Women's Athlete of the Year
It was early June, the first steps of summer on their way, and the time for hope to become as strong as ambition.
And for Zuzana Hejnova and Jessica Ennis-Hill, ahead lie one of the most important track and field seasons of their career.
Not that either had anything to prove. Hejnova was the 400m hurdles world champion and Ennis-Hill was the Olympic heptathlon champion.
But that was from a time when their lives were different: they shared the common bond of returning to the sport ready to climb to the top of the tree again.
When Czech Republic star Hejnova was asked whether she could make it back to the level of 2013, where she won her world title and was unbeatable, she was not sure having missed the previous summer with injury.
'I don’t think so,' she said. 'That was something special. But I would like to be back on the same level, that is my goal.'
It was a goal in June, which became gold in August as she progressed to successfully defend her world crown in Beijing, as she won in 53.50, and finish first in the Diamond Race.
The last time Great Britain’s Ennis-Hill was on top of the podium she was just Jessica 'Ennis'. Now married, she had given birth to son Reggie in 2014 and was slowly making a comeback with the big aim of next year’s Olympic Games in Rio.
Beijing was on her mind, and though it was not the be-all-and-end-all, the summer was of such importance to see where her career was and could she really regain her ability of old.
In July, she produced a series of fine performances at the Anniversary Games in London - back at the Olympic Stadium - and she decided to go to the world championships.
The outcome was sensational as Ennis-Hill regained the title she last won in Berlin 2009 with a score of 6669. As she said: 'This is definitely one of the greatest moments of my career. I cannot believe it.'
Men's Athlete of the Year
When the last IAAF World Championships were staged in Moscow 2013, Russia’s 110m hurdler Sergey Shubenkov won bronze, beaten by Americans David Oliver and Ryan Wilson.
Two years on, and now a double European champion, Shubenkov’s time arrived to land his first global title as he triumphed with the added bonus of a national record (12.98). It was a prolific performance, with all the virtues that make him such a great athlete: his power of execution and his strength over the latter stages of this blitz to the line.
His success came in August, two months after helping lead Russia to glory at home in Cheboksary at the European Athletics Team Championships as he proved he is the best in the business.
Greg Rutherford, the British long jumper, leaves no stone unturned in his preparation. Except for a few you suspect in his back garden, where his father built him his own long jump runaway and pit.
It was a work of construction which paid glorious dividends as Rutherford produced the best by a European this year (8.41m) to win the world title in Beijing and complete the set of major outdoor medals, adding to his Olympic, Commonwealth and European glory.
He also went on to win the Diamond Race in a year where he showed that when it comes to the big events, he is truly a master of delivering that gold-medal jump.