Brown grew up admiring the great – and 165-centimetre – Russian Svetlana Khorkina, the seven-time Olympic medallist and triple world all-around champion who was known for her long, graceful lines. Another favourite was Beijing all-around champion Nastia Liukin – five centimetres shorter again, but another in that same aesthetically-pleasing mould.

Brown is not quite in the Khorkina/Liukin class, but has her own ambitions, and chief among them is to help Australia qualify a full team for Rio at the April 16-18 Olympic test event from which the top four nations will join the eight already confirmed. Brown was the first reserve in London in 2012, but after just a brief break committed to another four-year cycle, the immaculate execution of her routines compensating for a slight lack of difficulty.

"The judges internationally just love her, she's a beautiful performer," says national head coach Peggy Liddick. "And despite her tallness – she's five 5' 7", so it's not like she's a giant. I mean, she's too short for Australia's Next Top Model, which she should be, but anyway ... !

"Apart from that aesthetic beauty and her artistic skills, Georgia-Rose is probably one of the most disciplined and hard-working athletes, which is why she's at where she's at. It's not been easy for her, she doesn't have the hardest skill repertoire, but what she does she's mastered and does really well."

Brown smiles that what may be considered lofty in her sport is "probably not that tall for a normal person", with the bars height the main point of difference. Despite the dynamic tumbling and vaulting often produced by pocket-rocket types, Brown says she chooses "things that suit my advantage" and work for a body type more common among gymnasts of the rhythmic kind.

Not that ribbons, hoops and clubs ever really appealed to the adopted Victorian who first started in the gym as a six-year-old on the Gold Coast. "Pretty much it's been just full speed ahead since then," says Brown, an articulate bio-medicine student who moved to train in Melbourne at the age of 15.

Bars, like for Khorkina, is her favourite apparatus, but she competes in the all-around, where her 21st placing at the 2014 world championships was the best of any Australian in a team that finished seventh. She was also a member of the silver medal-winning team at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and hopes to compete in the 2018 sequel in her home state.

The team held a training camp at Stanford University in the week after Easter to prepare for the Pacific Rim championships near Seattle this weekend, before the crucial competition in Rio, for what, all going well, is hoped will be the first of two visits this year. All did not go so well at last year's worlds in Glasgow, where the top eight – headed by the mighty US – earned direct Olympic qualification and the Australians could manage just 14th.

Brown was missing due to injury, and admits her selection disappointment in London has been a "quite huge" driving force. "I just missed out by the smallest hair, or whatever you say, but I think that going forward I'm just doing everything I can, no regrets, and just having the best time I can."

That would mean booking an Olympic berth for a full women's team, Australia having finished between sixth and 10th at every Games since Barcelona in 1992. Liddick is generous with her praise for the 21-year-old who – with former world championship floor finalist Larrissa Miller and Perth's Emily Little – is among the more experienced members of a young but optimistic group.

"She's such a good team leader. She's stuck around four years. She was reserve for London and she said 'I am not gonna be reserve again, I'm gonna make it', and it's just been her mantra," says Liddick of Brown. "And she's doing it tough, she's paying her own way and she really, really wants this. So I would love nothing more than to have her team come back here with that (Olympic spot)."