Laura Collett did not imagine she would be here on this humid night under floodlights with a gold medal hanging round her neck.
She wasn't sure she would be alive at all, let alone part of the British eventing team who had just waltzed to a wonderful triumph at the Tokyo Equestrian Park, the country's first title of this sort since 1972.
Collett stood on the podium between her victorious team-mates, Oliver Townend and Tom McEwen, who also took the individual silver afterwards.
Tom McEwen, Laura Collett (centre) and Oliver Townend show off their eventing gold medals
Collett went blind in her right eye following a horrific cross-country accident eight years ago
She smiled throughout the celebration. You could detect that from her sparkling eyes above the dark mask she wore.
What you could not tell is that she saw nothing through her right eye. She is blind on that side, a hindrance that makes her story one of the more remarkable of many remarkable comebacks being acted out at these strange but uplifting Olympics.
So much has been packed into Collett's 31 years of hardship and survival and success.
The biggest of the blows came eight years ago when she fell during a cross-country in Hampshire and her horse landed directly on top of her. It left her with a lacerated liver, a punctured lung, a fractured shoulder, two broken ribs and that loss of sight.
'When I closed my left eye I couldn't see anything out of my right, but originally they weren't concerned about my sight coming back,' recalled Collett, of Salperton, Gloucestershire.
'Then they realised a fragment of my shoulder had penetrated the optic nerve and the sight was never going to return. That was the hardest thing to deal with.
'But I adapted relatively quickly - in this game you have to learn to deal with what you get dealt.
'So just to be here was more than a dream come true, and to be stood here, with a gold medal, I look back where I was and think I was lucky to be alive, let alone do the job I love.
'I am fortunate enough to have a horse like London 52 to bring me to a place like Tokyo. To top it off with a gold medal, well.
The stellar Team GB trio had held a considerable lead heading into the final day of competition
'And I'm just super grateful to be on a team with these two guys as well. It's been an unbelievable week. Roll on the celebrations.'
Grit runs deep in Collett. Her father left when she was young, so she and her brother were brought up by a single working mother.
Money was tight and her mum, Tracey, rented houses with stables so her daughter could be near horses, so smitten was she with them. This gold was a reward for them
