Coping with adversity is part and parcel for every athlete.
The setbacks and challenges along the way shape the outcomes, the sense of joy over an achievement heightened by the toil along the way.
Sprinter Orla Comerford, who has a genetic eye disease called Stargardt disease and began losing her vision aged 11,is one of the most experienced members of Ireland's Paralympic squad that will depart for Paris, the 26-year-old ready for her third Games.
Having secured a surprise Rio qualification in 2016 in her Leaving Cert year, the Tokyo Games was where she expected to make her mark, bronze medals at the 2018 European Championships fuelling her ambition.
Those dreams were derailed by physical and emotional setbacks.
In 2019, the Raheny Shamrocks athlete underwent ankle surgery and a subsequent period of rehab. Having pushed her powers of recovery to the extreme, she was in a good place before a torn quad 10 days out from competition in Japan.
And that paled into insignificance when Comerford’s long-serving coach Brian Corcoran passed away while she was in Japan.
Having made the T13 100m final four years previous, simply getting to the heat felt like a monumental achievement in itself.
"He’s (Brian) in my ear all the time when I'm on the track," she tells RTÉ Sport.
"Tokyo Games were tough. Not that I didn't want to be there, of course I wanted to be there, but when everything happened at home, you just want to be at home with everybody for all of that."
The injury "completely ripped" her ambitions, Corcoran’s untimely passing compounding matters to the maximum.
Right now she considers herself to be in the best shape possible, but even that journey since Tokyo has been a rollercoaster.
She has been tinkering around with her mechanics and projection - how far forward she can move each step – but she had to basically write off 2022, hamstring issues forcing her into eight months away from the track.
"There was a stage at which I had had so many tears," she says reflecting on that rehabilitation period, but even her comeback hit a snag early doors.
With the 2023 season kicking off, Comerford was fully recovered and set for her first indoor season in eight years when disaster struck the day before competition when she strained her other hamstring.
Was there even a fleeting consideration to pack it in?
"The time for quitting was so long ago. I have not come this far just to come this far," she says. "There is definitely a stubbornness in it. I have done all this work and it can’t be for nothing.
"I don’t think I would be the person, or athlete I am today, had I not been through all of that.
She credits Jessie Barr, the former athlete who is now a Performance Psychology consultant, as providing great support during her low moments.
A glass half-full person by nature, Comerford admits there were times when she needed a confidence boost, particularly on the injury comeback trail.
When her top end speed wasn’t quite there so soon after her hamstring issues, Barr pointed towards her rapid starts, to concentrate on the positive rather than stew on the negative.
"It feels like I'm talking to someone who has been there and been through it all. I always think her advice tends to be fairly spot on for me."
Having graduated with a BA in Fine Art Media, Comerford’s creative passion continues to be honed in her part-time work in the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
It allows a balanced lifestyle away from athletics, but Paris is coming sharply into focus.
At the national senior championships she dipped under the 12 seconds – the first time doing so without wind assistance - and that inner belief is growing all the time.
"It’s not just wanting to be in a final or in the mix, but wanting to push up to that top end of the event," she says.
"I don’t think I would have had such a hunger for it if I hadn’t felt like I had been denied it for so long. I’m not grateful I was injured because nobody loves that, but I can see that it has made me as hard-working, determined and as stubborn as I am.
"It's not just the work this year it is all the years put together and things coming right.
In every sense a colourful character - Comerford is developing her own nail designs for Paris - she heads for the French capital with a steely focus and one of Ireland's genuine medal hopes.
"I don't want to make up numbers on the team, I don't want to just make the final," she says. "Those were great achievements when I was younger.
"I want to be competitive."
