Paris Olympics 2024: Triumphs for Cam McEvoy, Kaylee McKeown and Saya Sakakibara will go down in history

It was a Parisian night with a tinge of green and gold. On a Friday evening more than 14,000 kilometres away, a trio of Australian stars engineered one of the greatest nights in our sporting history. A mad swimming scientist who completely overhauled his training program to hone in on a single event at these Games, a backstroke master who became an Olympic legend with a fifth gold medal to honour her late father and a BMX wizard who overcame her family’s torrid past in a sport she almost quit to win a race that brought the country to tears. Cameron McEvoy, Kaylee McKeown and Saya Sakakibara. It was gold, gold, gold for Australia in two hours that lit up the French capital. Most of us were sleeping, but this remarkable gold rush will be etched deep in the national memory. McEvoy walked away from swimming after his third Olympics in Tokyo. He turned to rock climbing, gymnastics, callisthenics and strength exercises before translating them to his sport’s ultimate display of power — the splash-and-dash 50m. He powered through the chop of the La Defense Arena pool to claim gold, a year after he had prepared a seven-page dossier outlining how he was going to do it. He is swimming’s equivalent of golfing physicist Bryson DeChambeau. The same brain that studied physics and mathematics at university wanted to know if there was a better way to train for this race. It turns out there is. McKeown brushed aside claims she was our greatest swimmer of all time in a humble interview after her fifth gold medal. She won’t be able to deny it for very long though, and she is certainly the finest backstroker we have ever seen. If she makes it to Los Angeles in four years, she will trample the country’s gold medal record, now held by close friend Emma McKeon. “Kaylee is right there, with her Dad barracking on from that great grandstand in the sky,” Mathew Thompson called in a stirring reference to McKeown’s father Sholto as she pushed for home. Sakakibara’s triumph is one over a field of riders, but also years of mental demons. Her brother, Kai, was almost killed in an accident in the very same sport and when gold was first within Saya’s reach, she crashed out and was taken to hospital in Tokyo. That’s an unimaginable amount of fear for a family forced to watch on from the COVID-detached Australia. Clarity of mind is key for an athlete. Spare a thought for Saya. She had felt first and secondhand the risks of the sport she loves and she was moments away from the biggest minute of her career when her compatriot Izaak Kennedy crashed out of the medal race and her boyfriend sealed bronze. Then she rode the textbook race. Cathy Freeman at Sydney, John Aloisi at the same venue, Black Cavier at Royal Ascot, mounting cricket World Cup triumphs and the Matildas’ historic slalom run through a global tournament at home. This night of Olympic glory will come to stand among them.