Men’s Olympic Tennis Finals • Novak Djokovic Beats Carlos Alcaraz For the Gold • And so much more By Alix Ramsay

In his fifth Olympic Games, at the age of 37 and with a gammy right knee Novak Djokovic is finally the Olympic champion.

He becomes only the fifth player to win a Golden Career Slam after Andre Agassi, Rafa Nadal, Steffi Graf and Serena Williams. There is now not a tournament of note that Djokovic has not won.

Until this week, his Olympic reward for a lifetime of effort had been one bronze medal won back in 2008 in Beijing. He had never come close to the gold medal before – this was his first Olympic final.

So when, at last, he put away Carlos Alcaraz 7-6, 7-6, he fell to his knees and sobbed like a baby. He stood and gave thanks to the heavens, still blubbing, and then collapsed in his chair and howled into his towel. He could not stop.

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The poor ball girl holding a neatly folded Serbia flag didn’t know what to do. She had been told to give him the flag but here she was standing beside a grown man in floods of tears. She looked slightly panic stricken: Djokovic was temporarily lost in his own world. After what must have seemed like an eternity to that ball girl, he mopped his eyes and took the flag and held it up to the Serbian fans before running off to celebrate with his team and his family.

He knew this was his last chance to win gold. He will be 41 by the time the next Olympics come around and will, in all probability, be long retired by then. But to claim it, he had to get past the French Open and Wimbledon champion, the man who had given him a lesson in winning big finals just three weeks ago.

The final was the match the Olympic tennis tournament had been crying out for. In truth, it had been a pretty nondescript event until this point after a small herd of players withdrew at the eleventh hour through illness and injury. Add to that group the players who did not think the diversion back to red clay before the American hard court swing was worth the risk and the two singles fields looked pretty sparse.

No matter: Djokovic was a man on a mission. His problem was that Alcaraz was on a similar mission. From the very start, it was clear that the 24-time Grand Slam champion was playing lights out simply to stay in contention while Alcaraz still had a couple of gears to go through to reach his peak. Yet it came down to determination and steely focus: Djokovic simply would not let go of his dream.

Alcaraz was in turn brilliant, powerful, aggressive and wasteful. There were clumping winners from his forehand – the forehand that Djokovic was trying so hard to keep away from – and careless errors. And his serve was not behaving itself. He repelled all six of the break points he faced but could not convert any of the eight he manufactured on soon-to-be champion’s serve. The longer it went on, the more the nerves and the frustrations showed.

At the other end of the court, Djokovic looked like a spring coiled so tightly that it may snap at any moment. Somehow, he held himself together to take the first set and from there, he dug in as only he can. If Alcaraz ran him ragged, he gulped in air and stood up to take more punishment. If Alcaraz showed him the merest sign of weakness, he pounced. And after two hours and 52 minutes, he was the Olympic champion. The tears could flow.

“I’m telling myself always that I am enough,” he told NBC. “Because I can be very self critical. I don’t know. That’s one of the biggest internal battles I keep on fighting with myself. That I feel like I haven’t done enough or been enough in my life on and off the court. So it’s a big lesson for me. I’m super grateful for the blessing to win a historic gold medal for my country. To complete the golden slam. To complete all the records.”

And then he was asked, “is this enough?”. The reply could be read many different ways: “I think so,” he said. Who knows what the golden champion’s future holds after this. He will either be the all-conquering super hero in New York or he will be utterly spent.

The Olympics marked the end of the careers of Andy Murray and Angie Kerber and it may have been the last time we see Nadal at Roland-Garros. After being crushed by Djokovic in the second round, Rafa sounded very dubious about his chances of making the US Open. He is signed up for the Laver Cup in Germany in September but with his fragile body held together by bandages and will power, he might not go much further than Berlin.

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And as a few passing thoughts on the Olympics in general, what was that mascot all about? Over the years, most of the Olympic mascots have been incomprehensible mish-mashes of PR and marketing gobbledegook and the French one was no different. The red blob that snuck into every camera angle was called, officially, a Phryge (no, we don’t know how to pronounce it either).

It is based on the Phrygian cap or “bonnet phrygien” as worn by the French Revolutionaries in 1789.  In other words, a red hat but one that represents the revolutionary spirit of liberté, égalité, fraternité. But just as a camel was famously decribed by Sir Alec Issigonis as “a horse designed by a committee”, the Olympic Phryge is neither hatlike nor revolutionary.

In concept, it is worthy and terribly French. But unless you happen to be French or well versed in French history, it resembles… how to put this delicately? Think of the poop emoji only in red. Nonetheless, it has been everywhere and it would seem that Phryges breed like rabbits. The BBC coverage was covered with the things and from having one or two in the main studio on day one, there was a whole family of them on the studio sofa come the start of the athletics programme: Mama and Papa Phryge with a host of little, baby Phrygelettes. They had been busy.

Red blobs notwithstanding, the Paris Olympics has been a resounding success so far. The stands at all events have been packed, the crowds have been enthusiastic and – as they should be – partisan and everyone looks to be having a fabulous time. Once the rain relented on day two (and the athletes had dried out from their drenching during the opening ceremony), the sport has been excellent and the atmosphere electric. So get yourself a Phryge and vive la France.