With a gold crown on his head, Andreas Almgren faced the waiting press after crossing the Atlantic with his marathon gold medal.
“It’s a journey home I’ll remember,” he tells TT.
The Swede crushed the opposition to win the major race in his marathon debut on Sunday in a time of 2:06:01. He also became the first European-born runner to win the classic race in New York since 1996.
“When I got to 30 kilometres, I felt strong in my muscles, so I didn’t know if I had prepared enough. But when I started to pick up the pace with five kilometres left, I felt that it was really easy. There was no problem at all with attacking,” Almgren says.
It has been an eventful few days since Almgren’s victory. The attention has been enormous.
“I’ve seen a lot of news. It’s impossible to go on social media without seeing everything. Friends say that ‘everyone is talking about you in the office now’. I feel great. I’m trying to enjoy it and take in as much as possible. Very few people get to experience this,” he says, before describing a special moment in New York after the win:
“It was very powerful to sit courtside at a Knicks game. To be down at the court, so close, was powerful.”
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