By Paul Sheehan
While Australians were getting on with their work today, on the other side of the Pacific, one of the greatest women athletes this country has ever produced was reaching yet another milestone.
No one can match her.
Lauren Jackson in action.Credit: AP
Lauren Jackson, just under two metres tall, but with tears running down her cheeks, completed the most successful win for any player and any team in one of the toughest women's sporting leagues in the world.
Today, she led the Seattle Storm to the WNBA American professional women's basketball championship.
This is much harder than winning the world basketball championships, which start at the end of this month, and in which Australia are the defending world champions, thanks largely to Jackson, the 29-year-old from Albury.
After the game today, she was voted the Most Valuable Player of the finals. She was also voted Most Valuable Player of the regular season after leading the Storm to the most victories, 35, any team has had in a WNBA season, including an undefeated seven-game winning streak through the finals.
She also led Seattle to the title in 2004 but missed the play-offs for the past two years because of injury, making this victory much more sweet.
But it was brutal at times. Players were getting stitched and bound up and sent back out. Jackson was constantly in the wars.
Although the Storm swept the best-of-five finals series against the Atlanta Dream by three games to none, every game went down to the wire.
Seattle won the first game on the buzzer 79-77. They came from behind to win the second 87-84 and secured today's victory, also 87-84, only when Atlanta missed an open shot in the final second.
Three cliff-hangers, just seven point between the teams over three games, and the Atlanta superstar Angel McCoughtry raining down baskets.
Through the series, the tall, imposing, red-head, Jackson, the calm in the midst of the storm, led her team in both scoring and rebounding, as she did throughout the season.
After the game, Jackson said she would probably "bawl my eyes out" after the cameras had moved on, and she could join her parents, Gary and Maree, who had flown from Australia for the finals.
The key to Seattle's victory was having not one superstar but three - Jackson, Swin Cash, who made the crucial buckets that turned the game today, and Sue Bird, a multiple champion and probably the most charismatic women in basketball.
Jackson's resume is now imposing. In fact no other Australian woman in team sports can match the scale, breadth and longevity of her career titles.
In 2006, she led Australia to a world championship, thwarting the perennial powerhouse, the United States, and defeating Russia in the final.
She led Australia to the gold medal game in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics, with Australia taking the silver medal each time behind the US.
She has played for the national team since she was 16.
After moving to Canberra to attend the Australian Institute of Sports, she later led the Canberra Capitals to four league titles, the first while still in her teens.
She has won two WNBA titles with Seattle and has been honoured as the league's Most Valuable Player three times.
She has won two Russian championships, in 2007 and 2008, playing for Spartak Moscow during the WNBA off-season.
Eight league championships in 11 years, plus a world title, three Olympics finals, and a bushel of individual league honours.
No Australian, man or woman, can match that resume in elite world team sports, especially after today.