Australia's Olympic champion Cathy Freeman put aside her troubled personal life to win the 400 metres at an IAAF Grand Prix II meeting on Saturday.
"Physically I'm intact but more importantly, just emotionally and mentally I'm ready to get on with it," Freeman told reporters at Melbourne's Olympic Park after winning in 52.17 seconds.
"I feel this is my escape. On the exterior I'm quite a passive little thing but once I'm out there competing I have that edge."
The 30-year-old had announced her separation from husband Alexander Bodecker on February 22.
The dual world champion had interrupted her preparations for last year's Manchester Commonwealth Games to help nurse the American sportswear executive back to health in his successful battle against throat cancer.
Freeman eventually decided to compete in the Games but only in the 400 metres relay, which Australia won.
Australia's most prominent Aboriginal athlete said when announcing the end of her four-year marriage: "It was always going to be difficult with one of us living in the United States and the other in Melbourne and our respective careers have put extreme pressure on the relationship."
Freeman has been largely unsighted in international athletics since her Olympic triumph in 2000.
But she is expected to race 1996 Olympic champion Marie-Jose Perec of France at the world championships in Paris in August.
The 34-year-old Frenchwoman has not raced since quitting the Sydney Olympics without competing, claiming to have received death threats on the phone in her hotel room.
"This kind of feeling I had tonight just makes me look forward to racing against the best in the world," Freeman said.
When asked about the local media focus on her marriage split in the past week, Freeman said: "I don't like to put it on a scale of one to 10 but it's up there."
Lauren Hewitt completed the women's sprint double. She won the 100 metres in 11.81 seconds from Nigeria's Gloria Kemasuode (11.95) and the 200 metres in 23.44 also from Kemasuode (24.21).
Dual Manchester Commonwealth Games gold medallist Jana Pittman, experimenting with a new stride pattern, won the 400 metres hurdles in 54.64 seconds and was still almost two seconds clear of second placegetter Rebecca Wardell of New Zealand (56.58).
Kenyan Daniel Komen won the men's 5000 metres in 13:54.48 seconds ahead of Australian Michael Power and Canada's Sean Keely.
More from rediff