The hot, hazy rowing conditions in Beijing are bringing back crystal clear memories for rower Mahe Drysdale of the moment he became a household name in New Zealand.
Drysdale's campaign for Olympic glory takes another step today when he contests the single sculls quarterfinals.
The undisputed favourite for gold will need a top-three finish to advance to Wednesday's semifinals, as will teammate Emma Twigg in the women's quarterfinals.
The women's pair of Juliette Haigh and Nicky Coles require a top-two finish in their four-crew repechage to shoot directly into the final on Saturday.
All are favoured to advance in the likely "triple H" conditions - hot, humid and headwind - that have prevailed throughout their buildup and competition at the Shunyi course.
Despite his slow winning heat time on Monday, Drysdale brushed the conditions aside as any sort of factor in determining who will prevail this week.
"It makes it slow (but) it's not something that I'm really worried about. There are certain guys that are better in tails (wind) or better in heads," he said.
"Generally from the whole New Zealand crew, we're all allrounders and we can cope with anything."
If anything, Drysdale is drawing inspiration from the parallels with the weather at Gifu, Japan in 2005 when he won the first of his three successive world championship titles.
"If you look back, my biggest win came into a headwind in Gifu.
"The course is much nicer here but the heat and the humidity are similar.
"It's in the middle of Asia so it's a little bit different to what you're used to in Europe."
Because of the heat, Drysdale deliberately pushed himself to the limit the day after arriving in Beijing.
The "flat-out" 2000m row was more for his mind than his body.
"It was hard, I struggled, but you want to know what it's going to feel like."
Drysdale shouldn't be pressured in the relatively weak quarterfinal today, nor should the women's pair given their strong finish in the heats.
Twigg will do well in her quarterfinal to topple women's gold favourite Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus - who will be highly motivated.
A meat company in Belarus has reportedly offered any athlete from that country free meat and sausage for the rest of their lives if they medal.
Yesterday the men's lightweight double sculls crew of Storm Uru and Peter Taylor completed a near-perfect outcome for New Zealand over two days of heats.
Strong final prospects, they dominated their nearest rivals France to advance to Thursday's semifinals as the fifth-fastest qualifiers.
NZPA
Listen to RadioLIVE's Marcus Lush talking to Ross Tong on the breakfast show.