There are tricolours aplenty, as well as 'Well done Kate' signs and bunting along the street where Kate O'Connor grew up in Dundalk, Co Louth.
The neighbourhood pride in the 24-year-old Olympian, European bronze medallist and now World silver medal winning pentathlete is palpable.
Kate's father and trainer, Michael, is in China with her and was there to see his daughter scoop a silver medal win at the World Indoor Championships.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Liveline, Mr O'Connor said Kate had done "something incredible", adding that he was "so proud" of her.
"She is something special," Mr O'Connor said.
"She's an incredible athlete. Her shot put was something else and a personal best."
However, the rest of her family have been flying the flag, literally and figurately, from home.
"It was just amazing, myself and Maebh (Kate's sister) were sitting on the sofa and we were just watching it, and you know it was surreal, that's how it felt," her mother Valerie O'Connor told RTÉ News.
"We were just looking at each other saying, she's done it! She's done it! You know? Because she works so incredibly hard," Ms O'Connor said.
"When she came home from the Olympics, kind of her whole mantra has been that she was there and now she wants to take it to the next level," her brother Ruairí said.
"It's been incredible the improvements week on week and she's reaping the rewards now, so it's unreal, we're so proud of her," he said of his sister who scooped her European bronze medal less than a fortnight before her world silver win.
"I think I'm very fortunate to be here and to see it!" her grandmother Madeleine O'Connor said.
"I'm very proud and our school is as well," younger sister and fellow athlete Maebh said.
She attends St Vincent's Secondary School in the town, where Kate is a past pupil.
"I keep getting stopped and everyone is like 'oh my God, it's amazing!', it's great," she said.
Now principal, and former PE teacher at the school, Fiona Butler, said the entire school was rooting for Kate.
"You can see from my smile that we are so, so incredibly proud, her achievement ... was just superb," Ms Butler said.
"We were in the staff room at lunchtime watching it (the 800m, the final event), and we just couldn't take it in, what she has achieved in the last two weeks is phenomenal."
Ms Butler described Kate as "the perfect role model" to students in the school.
"She came back to help us just after the Olympics to launch our 5k charity run," Ms Butler said.
She added that Kate had a "a warm, infectious personality" and was someone who was "willing to help others."
"Our athletics is growing throughout the school and its going from strength to strength and Kate is just superb, she's somebody they can look up to," Ms Butler said.
It is a sentiment shared by chair of the local athletics club, Dundalk St Gerards AC.
"On Tuesday, after she came back from the Europeans, she came up to visit the kids at our club and we had nearly 100 kids there to see her and welcome her home, and you know she was great, she took pictures with them all," Paul Cheshire said.
"We are seeing an explosion in athletics in our club, in our town, and we're also seeing and explosion in multi-eventing, and you know that doesn't happen by accident, that's all been inspired by Kate," Mr Cheshire said.
