Matt Walls was unsure if he would be ready for the intensity of an Olympic Games after being struck down by Covid in March.
But the Oldham cyclist answered those doubts emphatically in Tokyo by becoming Britain's first ever male Olympic omnium champion.
Walls secured Team GB’s first cycling gold at the Izu Velodrome with a fine performance, as he beat New Zealand’s Campbell Stewart into second by a massive 24 points.
But it comes just five months on from testing positive for the illness which left him off the bike for three weeks – long enough to slow preparation and derail a bid for gold.
“It caused a bit of an unknown,” he admitted.
Olympic Champion🙌🏻🇯🇵#Tokyo2020 #Olympics2020 pic.twitter.com/1gyV9CHOcf
— Matt Walls (@wallsey_98) August 5, 2021
“I was doing a race in Belgium at the time, so I had to isolate, come home, get checked and I ended up having three weeks off the bike in total.
“I then slowly got back into training but there was the concern of the long-term effects as well. Luckily, I was okay and then back to training and it’s now all worked out.”
Walls was always seen as a medal contender after he won World Championship bronze last year. But not many predicted him to be this dominant on a nail-biting day.
The omnium is made up of four events with the overall leader at the end taking the title and Walls was brilliant from the off.
His day started with the scratch race, a 10km shootout to the line, which he won convincingly to take an early overall lead.
He was joined at the top by Netherlands’ Jan-Willem van Schip and France’s Benjamin Thomas after the tempo race but re-established his advantage in the elimination race – where the last rider to cross the line at the end of each lap is eliminated before a two-man shoot-out at the end.
Walls finished in second to take a four-point lead into the final event, the points race, which offers a mega 20 points for lapping the field, and a handful for the top four riders every five laps.
Walls lapped the field early and then kept an eye on his challengers for the rest of the race to cement his title.
“It is pretty cool but I will just carry on riding my bike, having fun and racing,” he said.
"I managed to get a good lead coming into the end. It's been a hard day but I came into those points race with a bit of a lead and breathing room.
"Thank you to all my family and friends. I wouldn't be here without them, especially my parents."