Australian track cycling veteran Kaarle McCulloch has hailed the mood in the national squad as the best of her career.
While there have been plenty of false Olympic dawns in the last decade, McCulloch feels the current squad is building serious momentum two years out from the Tokyo Olympics.
McCulloch has a countdown clock on her phone, showing how many days until the next Games.
"It is really good times," the 30-year-old said.
"I've been involved, in some way, with four Olympic cycles - a year and a bit out, 584 days to be exact - this is the best feeling I've had in the Australian team.
"Everyone is on the same page and we're always thinking to ourselves 'what will it take to win?'"
McCulloch has hailed Simon Jones, who took over as Cycling Australia national performance boss in the wake of the Rio Olympics disaster.
There were high hopes for an improved cycling performance at Rio, but a combination of horrible luck, some misjudgements and the ongoing might of the British track program cruelled the Australian campaign.
Australia only salvaged a silver and a bronze from the wreckage of the last Olympics, but the ambitious Tokyo target is four to six gold.
"That's a testament to the work that Simon Jones has done," McCulloch said of current progress.
"There have been some not-so-good things, there have been some good things.
"But you have to change things up if you want to get a different result.
"In my personal opinion, we're in a great place and I really feel like we're building some serious momentum."
McCulloch's main focus for now ahead of the February world championships and then Tokyo is the team sprint.
She was world champion in the event from 2009-11, partnered with cycling legend Anna Meares, and they also won bronze at the London Olympics.
McCulloch missed out on Rio, but she Stephanie Morton broke their own national record in October at a World Cup round.
While McCullcoh has remained in Australia for training this month, Morton has starred in individual sprint events at the Berlin and London World Cups.
Morton won her first individual World Cup gold medals - two in the sprint and one in the keirin - and went under 10.5 seconds in the flying 200m qualifying for the first time.
While McCulloch's main priority is the starter role in the team sprint, she and Morton joke that they would love to ride off against each other for the match sprint gold at the Tokyo Games.
McCulloch will contest the sprint and keirin at the January 18-20 World Cup round in Cambridge, New Zealand.
"I'm surprising myself a little bit with the gas I am bringing to the sprint," she said.
