Bungendore native and Australian Paralympic stalwart Angie Ballard was one of more than 60 Paralympic athletes who descended on the AIS athletics track to compete in an event in the lead up to the selection for Rio.
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The AIS played host to the Paralympic potentials for the GIO Summer Down Under Wheelchair Track and Road Racing Series on Wednesday and Thursday, January 20 and 21.
Ballard is pushing towards her fifth showing in a Paralympic games, and there is a clear goal in the athlete's mind.
"I'd really like to make Rio my best paralympic performance ever," Ballard said.
"It's probably the first games I'll go to where I have a really solid chance at a gold medal and I guess that's what I have been working towards in the back of my mind for my whole career."
"It's great to be in a position where that is actually a possibility, although there are quite a few more training sessions and things to happen before then."
Ballard is already the recipient of three silver, and two bronze Paralympic medals as a result of her previous outings but the racer has faced much adversity in the past - particularly between the 2008 and 2012 installments of the games.
"I had a really rough cycle between Beijing and London when I had a lot of things go wrong. I had quite a time where I wasn't healthy and I wasn't pushing well," she said.
"So about eighteen months out of London, I got to a point where I felt like there was not much point continuing and we started again and tried to reinvent what we were doing which was a huge risk at the time, but I ended up coming away with two silvers and a bronze, which is huge."
Ballard said she felt like she needed more time because she had only just found the recipe that worked for her.
"Whereas this time we've had a whole cycle where we know what we need to be doing and we're doing the work so that is what is going to be great about Rio, it's going to be so much more positive because it won't be years of bad, trying to rally to make it good again."
The 400 and 800 metre specialist has had a charmed lead up to Rio de Janeiro, and Ballard says that her confidence has been rejuvenated after a stellar 2015.
"I broke two world records last year and that was on my list to do this year, and as a goal it was still in that stage of being a dream," she said.
"So the fact that I've done that feels to me as though I have really turned my career around and I have found how to make this work.
"It's great to do what you love but it's also great to be successful and to do what you love."
