Poland’s Dawid Tomala lined up alongside 39 race walkers with faster lifetime bests than his but that didn’t stop him from making an audacious break at the midway point of the 50km race walk which ultimately yielded the biggest prize in the sport.
And he won the title without incurring a single warning from the judges.
Tomala was only contesting his third race at the distance and the 31-year-old produced an odds-defying performance in brutal heat and humidity to follow in the footsteps of the great Polish race walker Robert Korzeniowski who won three successive titles at this distance between 1996 and 2004.
At one point, Tomala led proceedings by more than three minutes and even though his lead was sliced back considerably on the last three circuits of the Odori Park in Sapporo, the newcomer to the distance brandished a Polish flag on the last lap before crossing the finish line in 3:50:08.
"It was an amazing day for me. I can’t believe it,” said Tomala. “The first 30 kilometres was so easy for me. It was easy, like (a) slow training (session). Everything was amazing, Too perfect. So I was thinking maybe we can do something.”
A combination of the dizzying heat and humidity and the physical exertions - along with the see-sawing race for the silver and bronze medals with five race walkers in contention - saw Tomala’s yawning lead cut back to less than one minute in the closing stages.
Two of the youngest competitors in the race, Germany’s Jonathan Hilbert and Spain’s Marc Tur bridged a gap on the chasing quintet and looked safe for the remaining two medals - with the order to be decided - behind the runaway Polish race walker.
Hilbert came home triumphantly for the silver medal in 3:50:44 but Tur, who won the European Race Walking Team Championships in Podebrady earlier this season, was closed down in the last kilometre by the charging Evan Dunfee from Canada who deprived the Spaniard of the bronze medal - 3:50:59 to 3:51:08.
Dunfee trailed Tur by a seemingly impossible 22 seconds in the last kilometre but the fourth-placer from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro overhauled Tur with an arresting burst of pace after 49 gruelling kilometres of racing.
Despite the challenging conditions in Sapporo with temperatures steadfastly hovering around the 30C mark, Tomala was only less than a minute shy of his lifetime best as he collected Poland’s fourth gold medal of the athletics programme at the Olympic Games.
His winning time might have been the slowest since 1972 but Tomala has the honourable distinction of becoming the last ever Olympic champion at this distance.
Three of the all-time greats departed from the race walking scene with varying results in the final staging of the 50km race walk in a global event. Reigning Olympic champion Matej Toth from Slovakia put up a solid defence of his title but ultimately dropped back to finish 14th in 3:56:23.
Now 51, Jesus Angel Garcia from Spain was competing in a record-breaking eighth Olympic Games, surpassing the record of seven appearances which he had jointly held with sprinter Merlene Ottey. The indefitable Garcia bowed out with a 35th-place finish in 4:10:03, receiving applause from the officials and his fellow athletes in the finishing area.
France’s Yohann Diniz bid for a first Olympic medal to accompany his many world and European accolades ended in disappointment again. The world record-holder stopped and started multiple times in the early stages before finally gesturing that his race was up in the 29th kilometre.