Peter Bol's first name is Nagmeldin, which aptly means 'star' - a seemingly prophetic move by his parents, given the stratospheric rise of his athletics career.
Three years after establishing himself as the fastest Australian 800m athlete in history during the Tokyo Olympic Games, Bol now has his sights set on a podium finish in Paris.
His fourth-place finish in the final of the men's 800m in Tokyo was the best result by an Australian in that event in more than half a century and embedded him firmly in the hearts and minds of the 2.46 million fans watching on television back home.
Despite the huge fanfare over that performance, Bol said that missing out on a medal is powerful motivation in an event that is decided by the finest of margins.
"That's what the 800m is about, who is better on the day and there were three people faster than me on that day, in the world and it's not about what you deserve, it's about what you can go out and get because no-one is going to hand you a gold medal," Bol told ESPN after the Tokyo Olympics.
Bol has continued to excel in the intervening period. In 2022 he won his third National 800m title in a row, before breaking his own Australian 800m record at the Paris Diamond League event in June of that year. His personal best time of 1:44.00 marked the third time he had bettered that benchmark in the space of just 12 months.
He would go on to be the first Australian male to qualify for a World Championship 800m final, with a seventh-place finish in Eugene, Oregon in July 2022 before claiming his first international medal a fortnight later, with a silver medal finish at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
John Steffensen, an Olympic 400m silver medallist and expert athletics commentator for the Paris 2024 Games, knows just how fine the margins will be for Bol this week.
"It is a lot more tactical than other middle-distance events that are on the track because it's so fast. And I'm not saying that the 5000m and 10k events aren't tactical, they are very tactical, but the 800 is over so quick for a middle-distance event, if you make one mistake it is very, very hard to recover" Steffensen told ESPN.
"I think Pete learned that at the Commonwealth Games. If he looks back at the Commonwealths in Birmingham he should have won that really, I thought he made a mistake in that race, that could have been the one that got away from him."
Steffensen, who executed perfectly at the 2006 Commonwealth Games to win the Men's 400m Gold medal against a world class field, also admits that sometimes it's just not your night.
"I think he [Peter] ran well in Tokyo, I really thought he did the best he possibly could at that point in time and he was just beaten by three better guys on that night --sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles".
Bol was ranked 19th going into the Tokyo Games and outside of the athletics world was a relative unknown, however in Paris, the weight of expectation will be ever present.
"There's a lot more pressure on Pete than what there was in Tokyo. When I say that, it's not the pressure of racing I think it's the external pressure, he's a brand now," Steffensen told ESPN.
Following his success in Tokyo, Bol became an unintentional role model for migrant communities and as the son of South African immigrants himself, Steffensen is all too aware of what that means.
"I don't think it's a role he put his hand up for. It's a role that when you're a young black male in Australia, you get by default," Steffensen said. "We don't see ourselves as different but everyone else does and so you end up speaking about it because you can feel it when you are around. For some reason because you are a different colour people think you react differently or don't like the same things they like because they aren't the same colour as you. So, it's just the way it is but we also know the beauty and the luck we have by being in Australia and the opportunities that we get as well.
"I think Peter is an Australian - he has emigrated here to Australia, loves Australia, loves representing Australia and I think that's how he sees it. I don't think it's him that decided to come out wanting to be that spokesperson, but I think he is happy to be, because he is proud of who he is as a man."
A far less welcome distraction for Bol came in the shape of a notification from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that the 'A' sample from an out of competition urine test undertaken in October 2022, showed elevated levels of synthetic Erythropoietin (EPO), resulting in the Olympian being provisionally suspended from competition in January 2023.
Despite the process usually being a private one, Bol's result was leaked to the media, sending the athletics world into a spin as he protested his innocence and requested analysis of the 'B' sample.
The competition and training ban was lifted the following month when testing of the 'B' sample returned an atypical result, however Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) continued to investigate the middle-distance star.
Further analysis eventually saw the 'A' sample reported as negative and SIA dropped the case in August 2023 ending six months of hell for Bol. Despite a buoyant statement from Bol declaring himself "exonerated" and the final decision "a dream come true", Steffensen said the trauma that the botched process caused could not be underestimated.
"It was a massive injustice and massive distraction for Peter. We watched in real time, in front of our own eyes, the dismantling of potentially one of the greatest 800m runners to come out of this country, based upon the inadequacies of others. And that is deeply disturbing that we even have to be a part of that in 2023/2024," Steffensen said.
"Without a doubt it would have affected him, there is no way, no way in the world that it wouldn't have affected him. It would have affected him financially, would have affected him within his community, without a doubt, it would have affected him within his sporting community without a doubt, it would have affected him personally and emotionally".
The case made headlines worldwide with WADA committing to undertaking a review of EPO processes -- an advancement that Bol welcomed, in the hope that no other athlete would have to go through the same experience he had faced.
Reflecting on the case, Steffensen described the impact of the daily vigilance required by high performance athletes. "You start second guessing yourself," he said.
"As an athlete, you are one bad milkshake away from getting into trouble with WADA -- that's literally how you think about it. It could come from anywhere, it could come from a lip balm -- you use your wife's lip balm and it has a lip plumper in it and that lip plumper has a corticosteroid in it and all of a sudden you've tested positive, it's as simple as that - and once it comes out in the media you're guilty until proven innocent.
"That's big, no-one looks at it the other way so that takes its toll. Peter has done a remarkable job bouncing back from that, remarkable, which is the professionalism of Peter Bol - it's why we love him."
That professionalism will be on show when the Men's Olympic 800m heats get underway at the Stade de France in Paris on Wednesday evening [AEST].
"It will be interesting watching him, come Paris. Because sometimes in life things don't affect you the day after, sometimes in life things can affect you down the track - you never thought it affected you and it pops its ugly head up later on.
"But Peter is a very strong man and I have absolutely no doubt that that he will make Australia proud and like he's always done, handle himself with grace and give 'em hell out there in Paris."
As to whether that elusive Olympic medal is within Bol's grasp, Steffensen is confident that despite all the extra considerations that now impact his life, the 30-year-old has what it takes to finish on the podium.
"There are sponsors, new friends, friendships, expectations, media expectations and on top of all that he has to go out there and deal with his own demons which just comes naturally with high performance sport and racing, and that's going to be a different feeling to the last Olympics that he went to and I think it will be really interesting to see how he manages that," Steffensen said.
"But if you ask me if he has the ability, the experience, the nous and the know-how to win a medal? Without a doubt, without a doubt. He's proven that before, that he can compete with the best in the world and if he balances and is able to manage all that, he'll prove it again."