Holmes staggered us by the margin of her superiority. Sweeping wide into the home straight, she glanced one way, then the other, for all the world like a schoolgirl checking the traffic. Then the 34-year-old, already Olympic champion at 800m, pressed on to claim victory in the 1500m final and her place in the history books.
Eighty four years have passed since Albert Hill did the 800m-1500m double at the Antwerp Games. Since then Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and others tried for that precious double but it eluded them. Holmes didn’t just do it; she did it with style. Then, an hour or so later, Union Jacks fluttered again in the Athenian evening, moved as much by gasps of astonishment as any waving of hands. For nobody saw Britain’s 4x100m relay team being good enough to beat the Americans. How could Jason Gardener, Darren Campbell, Marlon Devonish and Mark Lewis-Francis compete against the fastest men in the world? The odds weren’t so much stacked against the Brits as simply not listed.
But relay racing is not solely about speed. The technical challenge comes in the passing of the baton and it was that which undermined America’s effort. Justin Gatlin and Coby Miller made a complete mess of their change while their unfancied rivals made the smoothest of transfers. When Devonish handed the baton to Lewis-Francis, the Birmingham athlete had a two-yard lead on Maurice Greene. It didn’t seem enough, it shouldn’t have been enough but Lewis-Francis raced brilliantly to hold off Greene by the thickness of his skinsuit. Officially, it was victory by one hundredth of a second.
Holmes swept to her double triumph with rather more to spare. Into the home straight, she cruised past the long-time leader Natalya Yevdokimova of Russia for victory in a new British record for 1500m, 3.57.90. Before the line, Holmes spread her arms wide and savoured the moment of magnificent achievement.
Holmes’s second gold raised the GB team’s overall number of medals past the total achieved at Sydney. Though the athletics team had not performed well over the last week that will be obliterated by the memory of the exhilarating final evening, when, remarkably, the underdogs became top dogs. “Tonight,” said Campbell, “we just tried to let our feet do the talking.”
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As Holmes had earlier in the evening, they spoke eloquently.