Jack Todd

With 800 metres to go in the race of her life and her body hung out three klicks north of agony and a block east of despair, Clara Hughes reached down last night into a heart as broad and deep as all Canada and skated to a gold medal for the ages.

The ultimate Olympian, a woman who in every facet of her being is everything an Olympic athlete could possibly be, found herself an impossible 3.39 seconds down from the pace set by race leader and teammate Cindy Klassen with two laps left. Everyone who didn't know the size of her heart, the power in her legs and lungs, had written her off. But with a lap to go, Hughes had cut the gap to 1.86 seconds.

At the finish line, Hughes was exactly 1.5 seconds ahead of Klassen over the heartbreaking 5,000-metre distance - and she was the most joyous Olympic champion you will ever see.

That was after the collapse.

Those legs, trained through the long years of pumping bicycles up and down mountains, had carried her to the gold. At the end of this race, however, Hughes felt they were going to give way, but she managed to get to the finish line before she collapsed. Then she started sobbing - tears of joy.

"When I started crying it was tears of joy, like 'I can't believe I won the Olympics.' And my coach (Xiuli Wang), she's always very proper, was saying, 'Get up, there are people here.' And I was like, 'But I'm dying.' "

"What I think is most satisfying," Hughes said, "is just to have overcome that pain. That pain that's so intense that you feel like you're going to die. That's what it was, that's what I wanted, and that's what I got."

What happened over those last 800 metres? "When I get going, I'm just like a big old diesel out there."

She was. Paired with the great German skater Claudia Pechstein, who has enough Olympic medals to start her own mint, Hughes kept Pechstein in her sights long enough to let her own endurance - which is superior to anyone in her sport - come into play. Over the final lap, Hughes overcame Pechstein to defeat her by more than a second. Pechstein took the silver medal, with Klassen settling for the bronze.

To the surprise of no one who knows her, Hughes immediately deflected attention from herself to the Right to Play organization founded by Norwegian speed skater Johann Olav Koss. American speed skaters who medal here receive a bonus; skater Joey Cheek donated his to Right to Play, a humanitarian group involved in places like Chad, Uganda and the Sudan.

A few hours before her race yesterday, Hughes was watching television. "I was in my room and I saw a little documentary about Right to Play on CBC," she said. "I've been thinking all week about the meaning of sport and the reason for what motivates me and why I love to compete. In some ways I started feeling like I didn't know why. When I saw those kids, I think they were in Uganda, I saw those kids smiling and I thought, 'That's what it's all about.'

"That happiness and that play can give so much to the world. It would be nice to have an Olympic bonus like Joey Cheek to give but we don't have that. I've been thinking about that all week, I said to myself this morning, if I win my race, I have $10,000 in my bank account that I'm donating to Right to Play. When I saw those kids, I knew that I can't just do this for myself. That was a bit of inspiration, seeing the joy on their faces. I have something I can give too. Money is nice, but for me it's not everything in life.

"I want to challenge everybody, all Canadians to donate. If you have $5, $15, $20. I happen to have $10,000. I challenge everybody to help match it."

One of the happiest scenes you will ever see in sport was the joy Hughes and Klassen showed on the medal podium last night. In this case, the mutual support shown by the two medallists and by Kristina Groves, who finished sixth last night, is entirely genuine.

"It was kind of strange being up on top of the podium," Hughes said. "I looked at Cindy and I thought, 'I don't want to be alone up here while they play O Canada, so I pulled her up with me and we sang it really badly. It was awesome. The only thing missing was Kristina."

If they did sing badly, it was the only thing they did badly in Turin. Klassen, with her five Olympic medals, was far and away the Canadian star of the Turin Olympics, while Hughes stamped herself as an Olympian for all time with her fifth medal, with two of those coming in the summer Olympics.

Hughes said again and again in different ways that joy was what she felt through one of the most agonizing events in sport.

"I just felt happy. I think we've done this together in this Games and it started with the team pursuit. We had a moment around lunchtime when Kristina Groves and I were walking back from the cafeteria and we saw Cindy and we stopped and chatted and we started jumping up and down and laughing like kids.

"That's how it's been for the team. I think that good energy goes a long way. I wrote on my hand, 'joy,' because that's what I wanted to feel from my race and I really felt that."

Hughes said she took inspiration from many sources in this race, including a young Italian girl named Rebecca who held up a sign reading "Forza Clara," and letters and emails from back home.

"They kept telling me, 'Nobody is tougher than you, nobody can fight more to overcome that pain.' "

Even before the Games, Hughes, 33, indicated she will be back for Vancouver in 2010.

"It's not my last Olympic race," she said last night. "Every day is a new opportunity. You never know what can happen. Sport is about the joy, the delight, the rapture of being alive."

Never doubt it. Last night in this Olympic city, a unique Canadian woman turned in a performance as towering as the Olympic ideal itself, as inspiring as the Olympic flame.

Clara Hughes, one of a kind : Olympic champion.

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