The 25-year-old is more confident than ever, since last year becoming the first Australian woman to make a 1500 metres final at a world championships.

While the breakthrough performance in Russia announced her to Australian sport, Buckman prefers to remain athletics’ quiet achiever.

‘‘It’s fuelling my training right now because I have more belief, more faith in myself,’’ said Buckman, who will contest her first major 1500m of the summer in Melbourne on Saturday.

‘‘A medal’s a realistic possibility [at the Commonwealth Games], coming off top seven in the world [last year] ... I’m hungry to be world-class.’’

Buckman has been a find, but her former ACT junior coach, Dennis Goodwin, recalls when he thought she’d been lost to athletics forever, aged 11.

Competing at the Australian All Schools, then in the 400m, Buckman led by almost 10m at the halfway stage before she began to fade.

‘‘Then 3m out from the finish line, she fell like a sack of hay. She went from first to last,’’ Goodwin said.

‘‘She got up, walked across the line, then went over to the bushes and started bringing up breakfast, lunch you name it. She ran herself into oblivion ... that to me is courage.

‘‘It frightened the life out of her.’’ he added, Buckman so badly grazed she didn’t show up to training for six weeks.

‘‘I thought she’d given it away, then the phone rang, a little quiet voice in the background – ‘It’s Zoe’.

‘‘She’s very quiet, very shy. But I like that in an athlete because it means they’re inwardly strong.’’

Buckman is studying psychology. None in her camp doubt her mental strength.

It’s building a stronger body, coach Nic Bideau said, that can turn her into a Commonwealth Games medallist – even an Olympic medallist by Rio 2016.

Bideau, who coached Craig Mottram to a world championships bronze medal in the 5000m, took control of Buckman’s program in Melbourne after she graduated from the University of Oregon, in the US, in 2011.

Buckman qualified fastest for the world championships final last year but, despite being checked with 150m to go and finishing seventh, she felt it was her closing strength that let her down.

Bideau has since called on renowned conditioning trainer, Bohdan Babijczuk, who has worked extensively with the AFL, Basketball Australia and the Athletics Australia jumps program.

Analysing her movement in slow-motion, Babijczuk identified Buckman’s weaker left side and has developed drills to strengthen her muscles.

‘‘Part of the reason she’s such a good athlete, is she’s got the mind of a great athlete,’’ Babijczuk said. ‘‘She is so particular about doing things the right way.

‘‘We found she had structural weaknesses in her hip and we’ve looked at body balance. It’s like the analogy of a bike, having the front wheel rolling freely and the backwheel jamming a little bit.

‘‘When the going gets tough, the dominant side takes over even more, you end up swinging a lot, running out of control ... Zoe’s now beginning to bring the power in evenly and she’s noticing it more in her speed.’’

Buckman is naturally quick. She ran 54.6 seconds for 400m, her personal best, in 2004 as a 15-year-old and represented Australia at that distance at the junior world championships.

Bideau said endurance training had been the focus over the past few years, but speed work has the potential to take her to the next level and cut her of 4.04.82s by ‘‘two or three seconds’’ this year.

‘‘She did 54 seconds for the 400m as a kid, it’s in her body there somewhere, we’ve just got to make sure we don’t forget about it when we’re trying to build up her endurance,’’ Bideau said.

Australia’s record in the women’s 1500m is lean. National record holder Sarah Jamieson is the only Australian woman to medal in the 1500m at the Commonwealth Games, claiming silver in 2006. Margaret Crowley is the only Australian to qualify for an Olympic 1500m final, in 1996, finishing fifth.

But Bideau is convinced there is an opportunity.

‘‘Women’s middle-distance running is an event in Australia we can produce medallists in,’’ Bideau said. ‘‘If you look at who won the medals last year, America won two medals in the 800m and 1500m and Great Britain have had a medallist a couple of times in the last few years. It’s not all about the Africans in those events, we can compete.

‘‘If you come in the top eight in the world, that’s phenomenal and we don’t really recognise how good it is. It’s a much higher level of achievement than many of the other sporting results we rave about, winning a couple of matches in the Australian Open [tennis] or a cricket match.

‘‘I think a lot of people underestimate Zoe because she keeps to herself, she’s quiet.

‘‘But things have advanced a little bit every year to the stage where now she’s in a really good position to make her mark at a championship by being a medal winner.’’

Buckman grew up in Grafton, NSW, moving to Canberra when she was 12, attending Canberra Girls Grammar.

She has already posted a Commonwealth Games B-qualifier in heavy training, but said the Australian summer was not about posting times, but peaking for Glasgow.

‘‘I don’t feel like I’m at the edge of my peak yet, there’s still a handful of years to progress,’’ Buckman said.

‘‘I’m aiming for a medal in Rio, that’s realistic coming off last year’s results.’’