Luke Patience and Chris Grube will begin their 470 sailing campaign on Wednesday afternoon with genuine gold-medal hopes, but just making it to the Marina da Gloria start line can be considered an achievement of some note.
It is only nine months since London 2012 silver medallist Patience had his involvement in the Rio Games thrown into doubt by the sobering news that crew mate Elliot Willis had been diagnosed with bowel cancer.
The pair had enjoyed great success since teaming up early in 2014, following up European Championship gold with a silver medal at the Rio test event.
Willis' illness, and the timing of his diagnosis, gave Patience a dilemma -- quickly find a new partner or give up on their Olympic dream altogether.
"It was really tough to make the decision because I couldn't not feel guilty," he told ESPN. "The time I stepped back in the boat for the first time after him being diagnosed I just felt guilty the whole time.
"He's at home struggling and dare I say it, I'm doing what I love to do -- I'm enjoying myself in a boat. But that's the exact reason why I needed to get back in.
"What a waste it would be, because that's all Elliot would want to be doing, is being back in a boat. So, it would be an insult to him if I wasn't back in, charging on. But it was still a really difficult call."
Ultimately, Patience made the decision to get back on the water and teamed up with Grube, a sailor he knew well having raced alongside him as the pair made their way up the British ranks around a decade earlier.
"After the initial period of time feeling guilty about being in a boat and wondering what I should do, I quite quickly came round and thought 'Of course I still want to go to the Games, of course I still want to do this'," Patience continued. "It would be emotion that would say otherwise, the logic was that I was hell bent on it.
"Teaming up with Chris we sat down and we had a plan of, 'Right, we'll put everything we've got at this and let's get on that start line and be competitive on that start line'."
Grube, one half of the team the Scot had beaten to Olympic qualification in 2012, had a desire to make the most of his unexpected opportunity and continue the work started by Willis.
He was required to make sacrifices having agreed to swap a 49er for the 470 boat, though, not least with his weight. The 31-year-old's most pressing assignment was to lose 10kg in order to meet the lighter crew weight.
"It's so emotional, my feelings to do with what happened to Elliot because we're all part of the British sailing team, and we're all really good mates," Grube said. "It is hard. Also on the other hand, this is an awesome opportunity for me to prove myself and I'm going to grasp that with both hands and hopefully do Elliot and the country proud."
The Grube-Patience partnership has certainly made an encouraging start, with the pair securing fifth place at February's world championships, barely two months after teaming up.
But if the results followed quickly, they were a consequence of hard work and sleepless nights. The pair have had to constantly tinker with their set-up, something that will have continued in Rio.
Patience and Grube did arrive in Brazil refreshed having taken six days off on the eve of their departure, but even that holiday was taken with a degree of hesitation.
"We're so hard working," Grube said. "We have a hard work ethic. We just made sure we were quite focused on the things that we needed to be."
Patience added: "If you're staring four years in the eye, it's quite daunting, it's a long time. But we weren't, we were looking each other in the eye and saying 'We have seven months and it will come whether we're ready or not, the Games will come'.
"It breathes this wonderful air of passion, and the work ethic goes through the roof as there's no time to waste. It's actually quite inspiring, almost liberating, that you just have to charge on. You just have to charge on, you can't procrastinate too long."
The British pair will begin their quest for gold ranked third in the world, and it is poignant that on the World Sailing website, Willis' name is listed alongside Grube's as Patience's crew.
If they can repeat the latter's success of four years ago -- or even go one better -- on the testing waters of Rio then it may not feel wholly adequate to only receive two medals.
"I mustn't doubt the fact that there are two individuals -- myself and Chris -- who are going to be in the boat and are going to be on the start line, and more than anything we just want to give it every inch that we've got and make sure that we do it slightly better than everyone else," Patience said.
"That is the forefront of our motivation and passion. And with what has gone on with Elliot there is an extra bit of a push that otherwise we wouldn't have had.
"Really we've collected three individuals' skill sets and work and put them into a two-man boat."
So, with that in mind will three minds prove better than two?
"We've come back a much stronger pairing than we ever were before having had experiences [in other boats]," Grube said. "Now we're a team that can dominate and can get results. I don't just want to go to the Games to get the t-shirt. We want to come back having won."
Patience confidently added: "I see no reason why we couldn't win the Games."