Australia's first track and field medal has come on a road. Dane Bird-Smith walked to bronze on the opening day of the athletics in Rio.
Walkers have won medals for Australia at all recent major games but normally they hang from the slender neck of Jared Tallent.
![Overjoyed: Dane Bird-Smith.](/web/20160814162447im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/r/n/j/x/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqrnhx.png/1471035988400.jpg)
This time 24-year-old Bird-Smith put Australia on the board in the 20km race in a personal best 1 hour 19 minutes 37 seconds, 23 seconds behind the gold medal winner.
Bird-Smith has now gone where his two-time Olympian father David could not, and claimed an Olympic medal.
"It's bloody epic. I just can't believe it. It's totally unreal right now," Bird-Smith said, wiping away tears.
"Dad had some cracks at it. This is my first one down. I just can't wait to see him. I can't wait to see him. It means so much to be able to perform in front of my Dad. He went to two Olympics as well. I feel so proud."
After the race, overly officious security blocked Dave from getting to his son. The last Dane had seen of his father before that was with 900 metres to go as Dave was manning the drinks station, and handed his son a cup of water.
"He was going bananas," Dane said.
![Teary: Dane Bird-Smith after his bronze medal in the 20km walk.](/web/20160814162447im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/r/n/k/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqrnhx.png/1471132349143.jpg)
He was urging his son to hang on to the Chinese pair in front who had made a break with three kilometres to go, and to hold off the fast-finishing Brazilian being urged on by screaming local fans at the surf beach loop track.
"I knew he was coming, I knew he was on my heels but I knew I had stuff left in the tank," he said
"I mean, I think I dropped my hamstrings about three K to go, they had just fallen off the back. So I was walking on nothing. I just had nothing left but I hung on and a PB too. It is unbelievable."
He crossed the line just five seconds ahead of the Brazilian Caio Bonfim.
Bird-Smith walked a patient race, eyeing the Chinese pair of Wang Zhen and Cai Zelin, sure that they would eventually break from the group and go hard.
"They took off with bout four K to go and I just knew I going to go after them. They were the ones I was watching through the race, I wasn't going to let the buggers get away.
Not without a fight.
"I knew they were going to come out hard and I didn't know when it was going to happen but as soon as they went for it I thought I have to get on their tails and I have got to go for it.
"As soon as they went they went hard and they kicked hard. I got a bit caught up in the second pack, right behind them and probably wasn't expecting it when they went.
"As soon as they hit it they went off like absolute rockets. I reeled them in, I was only a couple of seconds behind them the whole way and I maintained that gap the whole way. I can't be happier with it."
Walking - the small, quiet sport in athletics - has been the sport screaming loudest before the Games. It was the walkers who first kicked the doping Russians out – before the rest of the athletics team was banned.
The walkers have protested longest and loudest about cheating and systemic doping. Walkers forced their sport's hand first.
Bird-Smith was pleased about the stance the sport has taken, and the fact the field was cleaner this year than in living memory, but he was also said he would have been unperturbed had the Russians been allowed to compete.
"I would still have taken them on," he said.
Last year at the world championships Bird-Smith had a stomach bug, then this year at the world racing cup he had a virus. This made the victory in Rio, with everything going right for him for a change, so much sweeter.
"The run I have had … it means so much to finally have a race that went well. I have done a bloody PB as well. It's bloody epic, hey?"
Bird Smith then walked, a little gingerly, away to the side of the mixed zone to meet his fiancé for a kiss through the cyclone wire fence.