Over a decade on from Australia's infamous flop in the London pool, expectation is high that this just might be the Olympics , when the green and gold triumphs over the red, white and blue of the United States. For the record, that hasn't happened since the 1956 Melbourne Games, when just 13 total swimming events were contested, of which Australia won gold in eight.
It's a huge call, clearly, and one that has taken on greater significance following some gentle, maybe even at times not so gentle banter, that has whipped up between the two nations as the countdown to Paris entered its final weeks.
But it is hard not to get swept up in the idea that the Americans could be cut down from their perennial pool deck perch, particularly after Australia claimed medal tally honours at last year's World Championships in Japan.
Well, that's if you subscribe to the traditional method which rates the number of gold medals won above the overall medal count, which is not always how Australia's great swimming rival across the Pacific positions it.
But it is going to take something incredibly special, and ask plenty of the team's generational talents in particular, for Australia to claim swimming supremacy in Paris - and, even then, that might not still be enough.
To be in a position where that is seriously discussed is an achievement in itself, particularly when you rewind back to 2012 in London when Australia's swimming team could manage only a sole gold medal and was later found to have fostered a "toxic culture" in a shocking independent review .
Four years later, Australia improved only slightly, winning three gold medals as part of a second-straight 10-medal return. The following year, in 2017, Swimming Australia made the decision to shift its trials for major events closer to the actual event itself, as former star sprinter James Magnussen had called for in a column for ESPN following the Rio Olympics .
The result in Tokyo, then? An incredible nine gold, three silver and eight bronze for a total haul of 20 swimming medals.
"It is a bit mind-blowing for me because I never did it this way," two-time Olympic gold medallist Stephanie Rice, who will serve as a swimming analyst for Australian broadcaster, Stan Sport , told ESPN.
"When I was competing we still had a three-month lead-in, and I feel like for middle-distance events like I had, I liked knowing that I did the trials and I still had a chunk of preparation that I could realistically feel that I could improve my time from the trials to the Olympics.
"But with a five-week prep, and because of the depth of the Australian team and how hard it is to even get a spot on the team, they all have to be fully tapered and fully prepped just to get the ticket to go. I think having a five-week prep has pros and cons, obviously we follow the American format now and it seems to work well for them, and I think it is good in the sense that what you have seen in the trials is a very realistic benchmark for what you can expect at the Olympics. But in the same breath, you might not see anything different from what you saw at the trials to the Olympics, because there is not enough time to build any more strength and stamina.
"But it obviously is working, with the longer lead-in that we used to have, you could get injured or lose momentum, you could see a big variation in performance. But I feel with what we saw at the trials, it's very exciting leading into the Olympics, it's such a strong team. There is so much depth and I feel like we haven't had that for a very long time; we've had superstars, but not the whole strength of the team, I feel like it is looking super solid."
While changing the timing of the national trials has made a huge impact, Australia is also clearly blessed with some generational swimming talents right now, headed by Ariarne Titmus, Kaylee McKeown and Emma McKeon.
The trio combined for six of Australia's individual gold medals in the pool in Tokyo, and McKeown and McKeon helped add another in the women's 4x100m medley relay, the latter on her way to becoming the nation's all-time Olympic medal winner.
And it's these results that Rice believes has spurred the Australian team onto even greater heights, the appeal of a winning culture driving the desire and commitment required to compete at the elite level of world swimming.
"I don't think that the organization [Swimming Australia] would have anything to do with the depth of the sport, I feel like that is really a coaching [thing] and a mentality within swimming," Rice told ESPN.
"I think what happens, culturally, in swimming is you have a someone like Ariarne Titmus that is super strong and all these young girls are like 'I want to be like Arnie, she is amazing', and so there is more of an influx into swimming. And naturally the likes of Arnie and [her coach] Dean Boxall attract other athletes who are in a similar event, a similar training programme, because obviously it's working, it's producing results for her.
"So I think what's happened over the past eight years with her and Dean is that it's created this amazing momentum where other athletes are like 'I'm going to go and train there, because it's a good program, it's producing results and it's just become bigger and deeper and more competitive. And so now there are so many girls in the 200m freestyle or 100m freestyle that almost all train in the same sort of programme, and then everyone ends up spurring each other on because the standard is so high; so in order to even just make the team you have to be up near that world record standard.
"That momentum is what's caused so much depth in a couple of key events and key races, which are great for us because those events, the 100 and 200 freestyle, those are the relay events and now there is so much depth. But you do see other events, -- like the 100m breaststroke for women at the moment is really weak -- and we used to be so strong in that with swimmers like Leisel Jones. So I think we still have [some events] missing but because we are so deep in the 100m and 200m freestyle, for the women, our relays are going to be pretty epic."
With six individual events between them, four of which they will start as gold medal favourites, whether Australia can topple the U.S. may well come down to superstars Titmus and McKeown.
But the challenges of a multi-race program are huge.
"It gets really hard, I think the emotional strain of the Olympics is what is the hardest," Rice explained. "It's a bit like if you've got a big day at work tomorrow, you're doing a presentation and have one of those sleeps where you're thinking 's---, did I set my alarm, what time is it,' you're in and out of sleep; it's like that but for eight days in a row.
"You've got this big pressure event coming up, a lot of nerves, you need to make sure you're getting enough food and sleep and recovery, but it just becomes really hard, especially for an athlete that has multiple events. And so if you happen to be that talented to have multiple events, you then have to become really strategic around what events you go for.
"So someone like Kaylee McKeown, she broke all my records recently in the 200 and 400 IM, she's second or third benchmarked in the world in the 400IM and she's not racing it in Paris, because it's too much in her programme to give herself another heat and final, drug testing, emotions, medal ceremonies, it's too much.
"So if you're an athlete who has to turn down a gold medal chance at an Olympics because it's too much, it just goes to show you the weight that each race has on an athlete. So that is definitely the hardest part of competing at an Olympics."
In Katie Ledecky -- Titmus' great rival -- and Caleb Dressel and Simone Manuel, who did not compete at last year's World Championships, the Americans have plenty of superstar talent themselves, while Canada's Summer McIntosh and Great Britain's Adam Peaty will also likely make a huge splash in the Paris pool.
But if Australia's men -- Sam Short, Zac Stubblety-Cook and Cameron McEvoy are all genuine gold medal chances -- can also deliver on the biggest stage, and relay teams perform as expected, then it may be that Advance Australia Fair earns more airtime than the Star Spangled Banner over the PA at the Paris La Defense Arena.
Rice, however, isn't preparing her American sledges just yet. What she is confident about is that something truly special is brewing in the first week of the Games.
"No I haven't weighed it up head-to-head but it's so interesting, I feel like this is one of our strongest Aussie swim teams in many years," Rice told ESPN. "But equally it feels like this is the Americans' best team in many years, too. So I really feel like there are a lot of races where we as Australia have a mega superstar, but then it's like America equally has a superstar. So I feel like that is what is so special about these Olympics.
"What I know for certain is that we are going to see a lot of world-class, world-record breaking times because of the calibre, but who wins and who comes second will be determined by who can handle the pressure and the emotions at that time on that day at that moment, because so many things can go wrong.
"But I wouldn't know, I mean we all hope that Australia will do the best that they can. I feel like we are definitely capable of that, but at the same time you don't want to put unrealistic pressure on something that you have no control over."
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