Anaso Jobodwana, the man who kickstarted South Africa's sprint revolution, is bubbling with renewed confidence after two lean seasons.
The fear of breaking down again had weighed heavily on the injury-prone athlete; he had lost 2014 to a difficult-to-detect hernia and 2016 to a painful pelvic problem.
The psychological blow was massive, and early this year Jobodwana was threatening to retire if his body failed him one more time.
He ran under the radar through 2017, but withstanding the rigours of competition gave him hope.
Now that old sparkle is back in his eyes and he's looking for an explosive 2018 that he hopes will include making his Commonwealth Games debut in Gold Coast, Australia, in April."If I'm going to be 100% at the Commonwealth Games I would need to have a 20.0sec, 19.9sec in the 200m and I would need to have at least cracked a sub-10 in the 100m," he said.
That's big talk coming from an athlete who has been under 20 seconds only once in his life - winning bronze at the 2015 world championships. His 100m best is 10.10.
"That's realistically based on who's going to be at the Commonwealth Games. So if I'm going to be ready I'm going to need to crack those times," Jobodwana said in Johannesburg this week at the launch of the Athletix Grand Prix series set for March...