GATWICK was full of Olympians yesterday afternoon. Among friends and family, hundreds of well-wishers and hundreds more simply trying to get to Spain for a late summer break, the blue Great Britain tracksuits threaded their way home.
Whichever way you turned, they stood slightly bemused outside the Whistlestop Food and Wine shop or buying train tickets.
It was the last day of a four-year cycle for the team of more than 300 who arrived home yesterday as one of the most successful Britain Olympic teams in history.
“Mission accomplished,” Simon Clegg said, but then he is the team’s chef de mission.
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Fittingly, Matthew Pinsent, the four-times gold medal-winner, led the rest of the men’s rowing four out, blinking into the camera flashes and cheers.
After that, there was the slightly uncomfortable public relations decision to allow the medal-winners to walk straight out, while those who had not won gold, silver or bronze were ushered away sharp right.
It was perhaps inevitable that the only thing that could slow down Kelly Holmes was the delayed Cyprus Airways flight from Athens.
She was last for the first time in a week after an emotional reunion with her mother, but on her emergence the arrivals enclosure erupted into shouts of “Kelly, Kelly”.
The scenes did not match the scale of the return of England’s rugby union World Cup winners, who were swamped by thousands at Heathrow at 4am last December.
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But they were extraordinary for an Olympic team and confirmed the growing trend for public outpourings for returning British teams.
“Coming back from Sydney [four years ago] was amazing,” Pinsent said. “But this has been even better, certainly in the terminal.” Pinsent was surrounded at the press conference by all of the 54 Britons who won medals, except Bradley Wiggins - the triple medal-winning cyclist had to leave early to compete in Brussels on the professional circuit and rides in the Tour of Britain, starting tomorrow - and the equestrian team, who had already returned.
The medal-winners had a slightly higher class of return, although because of the shortage of business and first-class seats, it left Clegg with the task of telling some of the bronze medal-winners that they had not made the cut.
“I had to turn left on the plane,” Stephen Parry, who won bronze in the 200 metre butterfly, said with a smile. “The flight back was brilliant. We all arrived [in Athens] individually, but to come back as a team, to be surrounded by that team, was fantastic.”
Parry had not expected the welcome and even Holmes had little idea of the impact of her two gold medals.
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“We called the athletes village Alcatraz because we never left,” Holmes said as the press conference turned into a Kelly love-in.
There was time for Amir Khan, the 17-year-old who won the last of Britain’s medal, a silver in the lightweight boxing, to say that he will definitely be competing in Beijing 2008.
“And I’ll definitely win gold,” he said.
He might have been the youngest and smallest in the room, but with his hand speed, few were arguing. You could already feel the blues setting in as the athletes said their goodbyes, but there will be plenty of time for celebration. Would they like an open-top bus parade?
“Of course, yeah, bring it on,” Pinsent said. “But it might be hard finding one day in so many different diaries.”