Standing in the sweltering Olympic Velodrome with his golden medals draped around his neck, Harrie Lavreysen, the Netherlands’ track cycling powerhouse, seemed momentarily troubled for the first time all week.
“Wow, these medals are heavy,” the 27-year-old told a clamour of reporters wanting to know exactly how he had reeled off a hat-trick of titles in such relentless fashion.
Lavreysen was made to fight hard by Australia’s Matthew Richardson in Sunday’s keirin final but after accelerating at the sound of the last-lap bell he was never going to miss out on the only Olympic title missing from his collection.
The former BMX rider nicknamed The Beast had already propelled the Netherlands to gold in the team sprint and won the individual sprint — breaking the flying 200 metres lap world record just for good measure in the process.
Sunday just underlined the fact that when it comes to the speed merchants of the track he is in a league of his own.
“From the beginning I tried not to think about (gold) too much, I just took it day-by-day,” Lavreysen, whose five Olympic golds is a record for a male Dutch athlete, told reporters.
“I did put them in my bag to bring them here, but I thought it was better not to focus too much on the idea of winning three times. Today I had to start afresh, not think about this (gold) because that would have driven me crazy.”
Lavreysen has emulated the Olympic hat-tricks of British sprint greats Chris Hoy (2008) and Jason Kenny (2016) and with time still on his side could surpass the latter’s record seven track cycling golds in Los Angeles in four years’ time.
“If he wants to go to Los Angeles, I feel sorry for the rest of the world,” Dutch team coach Mehdi Kordi said this week.
While Lavreysen could probably generate enough watts through his thighs to light up the Saint Quentin Velodrome, there is far more to his domination than raw power, explained Kordi.
“From a physical point of view he can keep the speed, a lot of people fatigue quite quickly in the second 100 metres of a sprint. His mental game, his focus. He’s a control freak in a good way,” the English coach said.
“He wants to know every permutation and doesn’t like surprises. So it’s not just one thing (that makes him special) but obviously he’s got lots of gas.”
Throughout the week Lavreysen beat everyone in his path. Whatever they tried was futile as an orange blur of kinetic energy roared past at speeds in excess of 70kmh.
While the flying Dutchman said he often just likes to ride on “gut feeling” there was, he added, meticulous planning, bordering on geeky, that goes into preparing for races.