PARALYMPIAN David Weir secured Team GB's final gold of London 2012 and his fourth win of the Games in the T54 marathon.
The wheelchair-using 33-year-old's triumph, which followed success in the 5000m, 1500m and 800m, meant he matched Sarah Story as Britain's most successful athlete at the Games.
Despite his exertions on the track, the Londoner summoned up the strength over the final 500m to make a decisive break his rivals could not match.
Speaking after the race on the Mall, he said: "I had to be in super-human shape to win four and I've done it. That was the toughest race I've ever raced in my life.
"They were all working together to try and stop me, but I'm used to that. I do my own thing and race as best as I can.
"It has just been an amazing experience these last 10 days, I've never experienced anything like it in my life.
"It just shows the British public are so supportive, they love sport, they love seeing Britain doing well, you can see how proud they are to put these Games on."
His victory came as Shelly Woods won silver in the women's marathon following three track defeats.
Her second-place finish behind American Shirley Reilly means Britain amassed a total of 120 medals – 17 more than predicted – and finished third behind China and Russia.
Woods, competing in the women's versions of Weir's events, had failed to get among the medals in this year's Games before yesterday's race.
The 26-year-old slipped 11 seconds off the pace at the 10km mark but closed back in on the leaders and was only denied gold by a second as she was narrowly beaten by Reilly.
She said: "It has been such a tough week and I've been wanting a medal so badly.
"I've always known that physically my speed is there, it just wasn't happening on the track.
"This means the world to me. I was hoping I could do it on the track, but a silver in the marathon is amazing."
Weir and Woods were the first-placed man and woman in the London Marathon in April.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article