Winners from every land, of every age, are proof of a testing Games

PARIS – Outside the court of miracles, after the chanting of his name – Nole sometimes sounds like Ole – has subsided, Milos tells me he doesn’t like my cap.

He’s a product manager, who hails from Jagodina in central Serbia, and he’s wagging his finger at the logo on my headwear.

It says RF.

“Please change it,” he laughs.

This is Novak Djokovic’s day.

Even Milos is surprised

by Djokovic’s 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (7-2) gold-medal win over Carlos Alcaraz

but why are we really? You don’t get to be the greatest at anything, even if it’s playing the trombone, without a hunger so profound that even Alcaraz later seems in awe of it.

The drive of young athletes, who are only starting to express themselves, is only natural. But the athlete with a vault of trophies taking his beaten-up body repeatedly back to work is staggering. How much can you love a game? How much winning is enough? What is there left to prove?

At the 2012 Olympics I went to see Teddy Riner, now 35, at the judo only to find L’Equipe had sent six reporters just to cover him. Twelve years and many golds later, he’s a national treasure. I wonder if on Aug 5 he saw Djokovic’s words and nodded in agreement.

“I love the drive,” explained Djokovic, 37, “every day, every week, of training my body, perfecting my game, improving myself. Still at this age.

“Every single day when nobody’s watching I do it as hard as any young player out there in the world right now, I promise you that. I do it as hard, and maybe even harder than anybody else. And so these kind of successes are not coincidences. They come as a result of incredible effort from my side.”

Djokovic is both scary and inspirational. He tells athletes how high their bar should be, else they should stick with an accountancy degree. All manner of things are possible, but only with fierce commitment. Like 30-year-old Sarah Sjostrom winning swimming gold at her fifth Olympics. Do such athletes doubt? Always, says Djokovic, “but the belief and the conviction that I can make it are stronger than my doubts”.

Some days it feels as if the Olympics are becoming tougher. Great athletes aren’t quitting so early and new nations are flexing their flair. Those five interlocking rings finally feel more than just symbolic for the breath of talent is truly wide.

“What a year, what a life, oh my god, wow,” said triple jump champion Thea LaFond, who then offered a small fact-file on her nation. “We’ll start with the basics. We’re not Dominican Republic. We’re about 70,000 people. It is a gorgeous gem in the Caribbean. Our neighbours also include Saint Lucia, Barbados, our primary language is English, and now we have an Olympic gold medal.”

That Saint Lucia which she mentioned, it’s just 173km from Dominica, and they won gold, too, through Julien Alfred in the women’s 100m. Alfred, who used to run around barefoot as a girl, said: “We barely have the right facilities. The stadium is not fixed.” LaFond said: “There is a stadium in Dominica, there is no track.” The point is they weren’t deterred by their environment, they found a way.

Alfred and LaFond are not suddenly brilliant. They are both world indoor champions from earlier in 2024 and yet the world seems surprised to see them on a podium. But then heroes are not equally famous, nor are they fairly made. They are not just the products of deeds but of other considerations.

It might be the events they compete in (triple jumpers come lower down the athletics pecking order, but perhaps above the hammer throw). Or the lands they arrive from (Sha’Carri Richardson, a very fine athlete no doubt, has the entire English-writing Western media helping create her brand).

Sometimes friends decry the lack of heroes at a Games, but they are often there before us. Hiding in sweaty sight. The exceptional Leon Marchand had five world championship golds before 2024 and yet it feels the planet is only just discovering him. Perhaps it’s because we don’t read Le Monde.

Either way, it tells us how pertinent the Olympics are because only here do all athletes find a stage to be celebrated on. The entire world rarely watches sport together, but every four years they religiously gather as witness. This is when we are all reminded the world is thickly populated with gifted people. And that winning is harder than we think.

It’s why Djokovic is exceptional and in his press conference, national flag draped around him, he said: “I want to play in the Los Angeles (Olympics in 2028).” Every Serb from Paris will follow him there. Perhaps even Milos, who swept the RF cap off my head and replaced it with his Djokovic (Lacoste) one.

He laughed.

“Better,” he said.

Then he took his cap back.

I understood. It was Sunday and it must have felt like a holy object.