Niall Treacy begins his Winter Olympic medal bid on Tuesday – but admits part of his mind will be focussed on an important meeting taking place in the crowd.
The Henley-in-Arden speed skater is set to marry Canadian ice dancer Renata Wong this summer and his parents and future in-laws are set to meet for the first time while he competes.
Treacy kicks-off his three-pronged bid for an Olympic short track medal in the 1000m heats and, though this is his second Games, he admits to being just as nervous as his first.
"I get married in July and my fiancée is still living in Canada currently but will move to the UK in the summer," he said.
"She and her parents are coming to watch the Games and that will actually be the first time that her parents meet my parents, and I won't be there for it! So I'm a little bit nervous about that.
"Hopefully I can just focus on the competition and she can manage that part."
Unable to control the family get-together, Treacy will be hoping to control his success on the ice instead.
Milano Cortina will mark his second Olympics after he competed in the 1000m in Beijing four years ago. After a roaring qualification period this year, he is now adding the 500m and 1,500m to his repertoire.
The 25-year-old believes his ability to consistently compete on the world stage has been the key to his continued rise.
"It's super exciting," he said. "After Beijing it was always the goal to come back and with more distance so I'm really happy with that.
"Going into Olympic qualifiers, it was very clear what I needed to do and so when I hit the criteria it was a massive relief since those two months were so stressful.
"So, it was job done there but to get the phone call from our performance director, who told me I was officially selected was crazy. I had not even really said it to myself by then so to hear it like that was really nice."
The Olympics being a family affair is something that Treacy is used to, making his debut in Beijing alongside his older brother Farrell.
It meant that the University of Nottingham student was able to lean on expertise and previous experience during his first Olympics, including some well-placed advice that he is keen to now pass on to all the debutants for Friday night’s opening ceremony.
"Farrell and Kat [Kathryn Thomson] had both been to PyeongChang 2018 and they had missed the ceremony, which was their biggest regret," he said.
"So they said they were going to do it in Beijing. I was racing the next day and they convinced me to do it as well.
"The walk down with the Olympic rings and it saying 'Great Britain' was just so special and it was my fondest memory of the Games.”
Since the Beijing Games, Treacy has enjoyed success on the international scene, clinching men's 1000m European silver in 2024 along with a bronze in the same event on the Beijing leg of the ISU Short Track World Tour.
And with silverware to his name, he is hoping he can use that boost of confidence to take him all the way this month.
"The Games is where everyone dreams about the chance of getting an Olympic medal so that will always be in the back of my mind,” he added.
“No one is unbeatable and so I need to use that to my advantage."