“And I peaked at the right time.” I thought: ‘I’m praying to God this pays off.

“On my day, I knew I could beat anyone in the world,” he says. In the gold-medal match, after he dropped his opponent, Carlo Paalam of the Philippines, to the canvas in the first round, the result was never in doubt. The 28-year-old Yafai arrived in Tokyo far from fancied, but over five contests in the Kokugikan Arena, he was precise, stylish and explosively powerful. If I go to another Olympics, I need to be sitting at the front.’” And I remember thinking: ‘This is absolutely horrible. “I was devastated losing and then when I got on the plane, no one wants to take photos of you, no one wants to speak to you. It was a feeling that Yafai did not want to relive. The defeat really hit him on the flight home: while Team GB’s medal winners, the likes of Nicola Adams and Mo Farah, were treated to first-class and business seats, the other athletes were “brushed to the back of the plane”. At the Rio Games in 2016, the British flyweight boxer lost in the second round. T he seed for Galal Yafai’s gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics was planted five years earlier.

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