Tuesday, 6 August 2019:
Never mind that old chestnut about no one being irreplaceable.
Sally Pearson is just that.
Despite often struggling for mainstream traction outside the biennial sugar hits provided by the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, Australian athletics has been blessed for the best part of 25 years.
In that time the sport has had at least one standard-bearer who could be relied upon to deliver on the global stage and attract mainstream appeal in the process.
Cathy Freeman shone brightest from 1996-2000, a period culminating in that unforgettable golden night at the Sydney Games when she overcame unimaginable pressure to add Olympic 400m gold to her pair of world titles.
After she retired - and while Pearson was just getting started - Jana Pittman joined Freeman as a dual world champ with 400m hurdles crowns in 2003 and 2007.
Pole vaulter Steve Hooker won Olympic gold in 2008 and a world title in 2009, displaying nerves of steel on both occasions.
And Jared Tallent claimed a slew of major walking medals while taking an admirably forthright anti-doping stance.
But when it came to longevity and medals at the major global meets, Pearson edged them all.
Even the great Freeman, with whom the flying hurdler is most often compared.
Both won Olympic gold and silver and two world titles in their pet events, but Pearson has an additional 100m hurdles silver from the 2013 world titles.
Pearson's career highlight was claiming Olympic gold in London in 2012, although she was at her absolute peak in the previous year at the world titles in Daegu .
And although the final five years of her career were cruelled by injury she will always have London in 2017 when she famously coached herself to a second world crown, shading great American rival Dawn Harper-Nelson in the process.
Australian sport has seen few greater comebacks.
Had she been able to avoid further injury, Pearson still shaped as a genuine podium contender at the upcoming world championships in Doha and next year's Tokyo Olympics.
But it was not to be.
"When you start begging your body for one more year it's not a good sign," she told reporters on Tuesday after revealing she had battled half a dozen different injuries in 2019 alone.
"Every training session I was like 'come on body, give me one more year, just one more year' and every time I did that something else happened."
Like millions of Australians, Pearson was transfixed by Freeman's heroics in Sydney in 2000.
Three years later aged just 16, she was at the world titles in Paris as a member of the Australian 4x100m relay team.
A star was born.
In a nice piece of sporting symmetry, Pearson's final meet in the green and gold turned out to be the 2019 world relays in Yokohama in May.
Playing the multiple roles of team veteran, inspiration and lead-off runner, Pearson helped the 4x100m squad clock 43.15 seconds - the fastest time by an Australian team in 19 years - guaranteeing them a start at the Doha world championships.
"I knew from the warm-up we were going to do this," said a delighted Pearson, with young teammates Riley Day, Maddie Coates and Naa Anang hanging off her every word.
"I had a gut feeling about how well we were going to run tonight.
"We proved it to ourselves, we wanted it more than anything and now we've proved it to our country and our federation that we are worth fighting for."
Pearson won't be competing in Doha now. And she won't be in Tokyo next year either.
She said all the right things on Tuesday about the exciting young talent in the Australian track and field team.
"I feel like I've retired at the right time," she said.
"I've left the athletics team in really good hands and with a lot of confidence that our next group of athletes are going to be sensational."
The likes of Day, Anang, rising 800m runner Catriona Bisset, javelin thrower Kelsey-Lee Barber and others could well end up enjoying very good careers.
Maybe even great ones.
But they won't replace Pearson.
Because they can't.
