Team GB’s Daryll Neita during the Women’s 200m at the Paris OlympicsDaryll Neita emerged from last summer’s Paris cauldron proud but aware that she needed to change. Fourth in the 100m and fifth in the 200m, she was more convinced than ever that a major individual medal was a stride away. And while she won a 4x100m relay silver, the overall Olympic experience was “bittersweet.”

So Neita, 28, packed her bags and bought two one-way tickets – the other for chihuahua Melon – to Florida and a spot on legendary coach Lance Braumann’s roster.

Within days she was stepping on to the track with men’s 100m Olympic champ Noah Lyles and the Australian teen prodigy Gout Gout. And from so often being the nearly woman Neita now feels 100% certain that life-changing success is within reach.

“I was so locked in in Paris that I was not leaving without an individual medal,” she says. “That was what I promised myself, I wasn’t going to leave without one, and then I left without the individual medal.

“That was tough because I knew I could do it and I was so close. That would have just changed my life, really put me where I was trying to be, but there was actually so much good stuff.

“I did great. I’m so close. It might not look how it needs to right now, but I know where I’m going and I know what I’m doing and I will be on that podium. I will get there. I’m around people that have achieved these things many times.”

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Getting to work next to “perfectionist” Lyles, who is never slow to offer advice, while being guided by the coach who has led athletes to more than 50 Olympic and world medals is already paying dividends.

Neita, speaking to mark the launch of tickets for next summer’s European championships in Birmingham, is running well and cashing in on Michael Johnson’s lucrative Grand Slam Track programme.

She will soon come back to Europe for a handful of Diamond League appearances before sharpening up for August’s trials and, once there are no niggles, an attack on the medals at September’s World Championships.

“Hundred per cent we’re going to see me on that podium and that’s something that I feel very confident in,” she says. “Getting so close to that podium twice, I felt like it’s really important for me to be in a place where every single thing is gearing towards it and there’s no stone left unturned.

“Coach B was an amazing opportunity. He’s coached so many females that have inspired me in my journey and I know he can do the same with me.”

Neita has lapped up Lyles’ tidbits of wisdom. “Very inspiring,” she adds. “He has the eye for everybody else, so he’s very giving in terms of any kind of correction you can make or if he thinks you can do something better.”

Gout Gout is being talked up as sprinting’s next megastar.(Image: Morgan Hancock, Getty Images)Watching Gout, 17, up close, meanwhile, was dazzling. The Aussie is already smashing records and reasonably being talked up as the long-awaited heir to Usain Bolt.

And Neita says: “I even learned some things from him because when he was doing his drills, I was like, ‘Wow, his ankle stiffness. There’s some things that he’s got naturally that are just really, really special.”

Yet Neita needs time to think about what they may be learning from her. Resilience, she says after a lengthy pause.

“How I am able to bring a positive attitude even in moments when things might not be going exactly how I might want them to be going,” she adds.

“Being able to come back and reset, go again, just being professional on that level where it’s like it’s sport, you’ve gotta trust your process, you’ve gotta come back in with a smile on your face. You’ve gotta know it’s fine, like it’s part of it. You just keep moving forward, I think. I think they might have picked up on that.”