London 2012 moved a step closer on Monday for the 44 swimmers that will represent Great Britain as they arrived at the Olympic village for a brief stay before heading to their holding camp in Edinburgh in midweek.
Among them was Keri-anne Payne, who became the first athlete to book a spot on Team GB following victory in the 10 kilometre open water at the World Championships in Shanghai last year.
The 24-year-old won the silver medal at the Beijing Games and since then has claimed world titles in 2009 and 2011, sandwiching an eighth-place finish in 2010, the same year she won Commonwealth bronze in the 400 metres individual medley.
However, Payne will solely be competing in the open water in the capital and will have to wait until August 9, five days after the pool competition concludes, to negotiate the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
Experience, though, counts for a lot as Payne takes her place in a team of which more than half are Olympic debutants.
For Payne, absorbing the Olympics is highly personal to each athlete, whether they be first-timers or the nine on the team, including her fiance David Carry who she will marry in the autumn, who are competing at their third Games.
She told Press Association Sport: "Everybody is their own person and I would never, ever say to anybody how to go about their Olympic experience because it is different for everybody.
"Hopefully the young ones will learn a bit from the likes of David (Carry) who is coming up to his third Olympics and Jo Jackson is the same and then myself and Becky (Adlington) at our second.
"They'll realise that going down to the dinner hall every five minutes isn't a great thing or eating too much isn't good but we are all elite athletes and we all know what is good for us and what is bad for us. So I am pretty sure there will be no swimmers running around causing trouble because we are all so focused on what we are doing."