Sakakibara set for dominant reign as the queen of BMX
It was a triumph so dazzling and so dominant that it felt almost hard to credit how superior Saya Sakakibara had been to her floundering fellow BMX racers.
Yet Australia's rocket woman herself never had any doubts.
Indeed, now that the Gold Coast golden girl has finally won the biggest race of all, the new queen of this thrilling but precarious sport fancies it could be the start of a commanding new era for her.
"I hope so," beamed the 24-year-old, when asked whether she could be the dominant figure for years to come. "I knew that this wasn't the end."
Sakakibara won seven consecutive races, including the final, over two days in majestic fashion, never being headed at any time - and she did it just days after testing positive for COVID-19, believing her Games were over and with her throat feeling "on fire".
"There was so much hype for this one, so much build-up for me to win this gold, but I know I just want to keep going, I just want to see how far I can go. And this was just part of it," said Sakakibara.
And the most remarkable aspect?
In these helter-skelter 400-metre races, which are said to feature more accidents and injuries than any other Olympic sport as eight riders jostle at breakneck speed over bumps and hollows and around hairpin bends, Sakakibara knew she’d win the moment she left the gate.
“Out of the start. I knew it then. It just comes down to that split second of whether I react as fast as I can, or if I hesitate,” she said. “Not even two seconds. It literally all comes down to that split second.
“I actually did think that it was gonna play out like that over the last couple of days," she said of her dominance.
"I knew that I had lane one, the fastest hill time, the fastest lap. The evidence was there. I just had to believe it.”
Now she believes, in a way that she never quite did before. So once she got that lead, she was in a different league, eventually bringing tears to her eyes and those of her cheering brother Kai, a racer himself who suffered brain injuries in a crash at Bathurst in 2020.
This had been the triumph Sakakibara had hoped to achieve for him in Tokyo three years ago, but she ended up in hospital instead while racing at the Olympics there.
"I really wanted that fairytale ending at Tokyo and when I didn't get it, it was definitely heartbreaking and took some time to recover from. But I needed those experiences to come back from my second Olympics in Paris with this gold," said Sakakibara, who pondered retirement after that 2021 crash.
She and Kai weren't the only ones left crying. Her French partner Romain Mahieu had won the bronze in the men's race when he saw her triumph.
"I saw her winning and my emotion went like crazy," he said. "I'm more happy for her than for me right now, because she's been through a lot of things and was so, so close to giving up a few years ago - and now she's an Olympic champion."