It is a big week for Poland with the IAAF World Indoor Championships starting in the northern seaside town of Sopot on Friday.
But one Polish athlete is probably looking beyond the events of next weekend, with his eyes firmly cast on a fortnight’s time.
It will be then that Pawel Fajdek, the hammer World champion, will be able to blow away the cobwebs of this decisive period of training at the 14th European Cup Winter Throwing in Leiria.
The Portuguese city is hosting this biggest gathering of European throwers outside of the major championships.
It is one of the key events of these early months of a new year, a chance for some of those athletes who cannot compete indoors to gauge just how well they are progressing towards summer.
Fajdek will spearhead a 12-strong Polish team in Leiria as the clock ticks towards the European Athletics Championships in Zurich in August where he will be a big contender for the title.
At 24, he is one of the great young stars of the sport, building on his victory at the European Athletics U23 championships in Ostrava in 2011 with gold at the World Championships in Moscow with a throw of 81.97m.
The European Cup Winter combines the best of all four throwing disciplines - the shot put, discus, hammer and javelin - with 16 competitions over two days, for senior men and women and under-23 men and women.
A year ago in Castellón, Spain, Fajdek was third with 75.52m as Hungary’s Krisztian Pars, the Olympic champion, won with 77.24m and Belarusian Pavel Kryvitski was second with 75.89m.
But in Moscow, Fajdek turned the tables in style as he beat Pars by 1.67m to win the biggest prize of 2013.
The Polish team have great strength in Leiria with Hubert Chmielak and Pawel Rakoczy, javelin throwers who have both passed 80m, while in their women’s squad, Barbara Madejczky, now a veteran at 37, still has that competitive edge. Her personal best of 64.08m goes back to 2006 but if she can reproduce some of that form, she will be in with a chance of making the top three.
Slovakia are sending four athletes to Portugal and among that quartet will be hammer thrower Martina Hrsanova, the 2009 World bronze medallist and 2012 European Athletics silver medallist, while the Czech Republic have Jitka Kubelova competing in both the shot and discus.