Carolina Klüft has electrified souls with her positive energy and incredibly deep well of enthusiasm, and she has penetrated interest in a two-day event which few people around the globe really ever paid attention to prior to her reign at the top.
She has taken laps of honour with a sorority of women who've crawled across the finish line one final time following the seven events which make up the heptathlon, and she has felt a oneness with them both in spirit and in exhaustion.
That electricity and buzz which the world has come to expect of "Carro", as we call her here in Sweden, began to die down to infrequent pulses of energy following her third-consecutive IAAF World Outdoor Championship last season.
Klüft, who is a staunch supporter of one taking the opportunity to follow their dreams, began to dream of how far she could leap through the air and land in a sand pit rather than how far she could fling a javelin or how fast she could run 800m.
She'd considered throwing in the towel after setting her personal best and establishing a new European record (7032 points) in Osaka, but to say that a woman who hasn't lost a heptathlon competition since 2001 is "throwing in the towel" is to speak falsely.
Carolina Klüft has simply lost motivation for contesting the heptathlon after winning everything there is to gain in this sport.
Olympic medal? She has one. Two would be great, and she'd be a near certainty to keep her unbeaten streak alive in Beijing had she decided to keep at it for one final hurrah.
But, she's opting for other events, and will watch from the side-lines and read results on the internet as her competitors stake claim to medal opportunities they may have once wished to get, but now smell as the months draw closer.
World outdoor titles? Carro won her first one in 2003, and followed up her senior barrage of honours collected with titles in 2005 and 2007.
World indoor championships? She has a global pentathlon title earned in 2003. As a matter of fact, Klüft has won two European indoor championships, two European outdoor ones and has taken home a European Cup title as well.
Carolina Klüft has flown around the world to contest events in front of crowds which grew exponentially as her fame and stature did, and she'd always had a sense of positive learning experiences to go with the utter exhaustion it takes to command victory against the best in the world time and time again.
She felt happy to be on the field and to line up on the track; she was having the time of her life, it looked like, and the 25-year old seemed destined to spend several more years at the top if she simply wanted to.
Desire and motivation are two key words which had been associated with Klüft through the years following her 2001 European Junior title and her two World Junior records set in 2002, one indoors and one outdoors.
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