9th May 2013 10:09
It is early season, which means for some the gradual climb towards hitting the peak at the right time. One athlete is a prime example - French triple jumper Teddy Tamgho.
Having missed last summer with injury, a major blow to both the European Athletics Championships and Olympic Games, he is back ready to show that it will be business as usual.
Tamgho is the world indoor record holder and for now, he sits quietly in fourth spot on the European Athletics rankings after his comeback at Bron on 30 March. It took him 16.76m and the key was the fact he was jumping again.
As he said at the time: 'I have been waiting for this moment.'
Twenty months, infact, since he fractured his ankle at the European Athletics U23 Championships in Ostrava.
Now for the next step. In the south-east suburbs of Paris on Sunday, Tamgho, 23, will chase the qualifying standard needed for the World Championships when he competes at the 29th Meeting Elite in Montgeron.
The distance he needs is 17.20m, which should be in the radar of a man who has a personal best outdoors of 17.98m from 2010 and indoors, the world record of 17.92m, a mark he established at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Paris in 2011.
It would have something of psychological symmetry if, so close to the venue of that world record, Tamgho shows he is back towards his best this weekend at this European Athletics Permit meeting.
He has put 2012 behind him and his rivals will be watching closely what happens now.
The European Athletics Team Championships in Gateshead on 22-23 June could be a significant event for Tamgho because it is one of the biggest competitions before the World Championships, and this Sunday is likely to tell him how far he is on that climb back to his best.
Fresh from winning bronze in the 60m hurdles at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Göteborg, another Frenchman, Pascal Martinot-Lagarde, will compete in the 110m hurdles in Montgeron while teammate Florian Carvalho, who was second in Helsinki in the 1500m, runs in the 800m.
The 250m might not be a distance run much, but it could prove important for Britain's Jodie Williams.
Now 19, Williams is in her first year as a senior having made her mark by winning the 100m at the World Junior Championships in Moncton in 2010 and the 100m and 200m at the European Athletics Junior Championships in Tallinn 12 months later.
In Montgeron she will head the 250m field in what should be a testing, if not different, distance to demonstrate her phenomenal speed.