The baton of Canadian expectations has been passed to Alexandre Despatie, and he has no intention of dropping it.
The challenge for Olympic glory is who he is and why he's here in Athens and what his entire life has been about.
This afternoon, in what could end up being the best day of a rather thin Olympic Games, Despatie will dive for gold, Perdita Felicien will hurdle for gold and the outcasts that are the Team Canada baseball lineup will play for a chance at gold.
All of it happening at virtually the same time.
The difference between today and this past Sunday -- another day when Canadian hopes were high, but performances were startlingly low -- is that Despatie and Felicien have managed the big stage before. They are comfortable on it. They not only say they can handle it, they say they will handle it.
"Alexandre needs to lead," his coach, Michel Larouche, said when Despatie ended up first after the preliminary dives in the men's 3-metre springboard event. "For him to be first, that's great. Diving last is a position he loves."
Despatie has been talked about since he won a Commonwealth Games gold medal at the age of 13. Six years and nine inches of height later, a grown-up Despatie hopes to use this Summer Games as his coming-out party.
And now, after rowing disappointment, after medals splintered away and Canadian excuses, after so much national angst and analysis, the pressure on Despatie to perform increases -- even if he won't admit it himself.
"I would lie if I say no," Larouche said about the external pressure, knowing what happened to his other prize pupil, Emilie Heymans, when she was facing victory. "The pressure is greater. We've been talking about the Canadian team badly the past couple of days. It has been very difficult because everybody here is doing the best they can.
"Not everybody has the same tools."
That may be the best point about today. Despatie can defeat his field. Felicien can defeat hers. They are not the long shots the baseball team is. Watch: They will show just how much Olympian they are.
All Despatie wants to do is get going. You could see that yesterday. He was sharp on five of his six preliminary dives and seems comfortable and confident for today's semi-final compulsory round and six-dive final. He will do the same six dives he ran away from the field with yesterday -- more than 22 points ahead of Bo Peng of China, who was second.
"It's good for me but you can't base everything on what I did (yesterday)," Despatie said. "Sometimes somebody can have a very good prelim and a very bad final and sometimes it's the opposite.
"To me, it's just going to be another day. Wake up in the morning, come here, get into training, do semis, and at night do finals. You can't start thinking -- finally that day has come and this and that because really, it's another meet. You have to keep that point of view on the competition. Focus on what I have to do, not where I am or what period of my career I'm in.
"I love competing, I love diving, I love going to the pool every day thinking maybe I can do better today than yesterday -- I'm definitely enjoying every minute of this."
It's the first of his two opportunities to show himself as the best diver in the world. It's the first time for Despatie from Laval, Que., and Felicien of Pickering to become truly national figures.
"We can't do good for everybody," Despatie said, deflecting expectations. "We're the divers, we dive. The rowers do their thing and everybody else does their thing ... We came here to dive and that's what we're going to do.
"I think it's time to get started."