Thousands feel the Redgrave factor

Five gold medals in five successive Olympics demands relentless bloody-minded self-absorption. Quite reasonably, Redgrave did not do any of it for all those people who want to thank him. Neither did Foster nor Cracknell nor Pinsent, who find themselves dealing with much the same public reaction at the moment - the need to touch, to communicate, to thank.

Yet, miraculously, everybody understands one another, although the quartet at the centre of the tornado are still astonished afresh every time their power to move manifests itself. After years of looking only inward, as the necessary selfishness of Olympian dedication demands, it is dawning on them that their greatest moment was also wonderful for impossible numbers of people whose names they will never know.

It is a reminder of what Beirut hostage John McCarthy experienced after his release. He described how people were moved to tears by the mere sight of him, reaching out to touch him as if he possessed the power to heal, before backing away for fear of intruding. On Saturday, two of the gold medallists outlined similar incidents of this touchingly British, non-intrusive congratulation.

"I was standing by the side of the road when this bus screeched to a halt in front of me in an emergency stop," related Foster. "The doors opened and the bus driver grinned at me madly and made a thumbs up sign. Then, while all the OAPs on the bus picked themselves up off the floor, the bus drove off."

Pinsent was having dinner in a restaurant with his girlfriend, aware of the usual nudges of recognition about him. But it was only as they prepared to leave that the restaurant's entire clientele rose to demonstrate their feelings with wild applause.

Never meet your heroes, the old saying advises. At Eton, thousands made it their business to disregard this advice and were not disappointed. No doubt the four men are as flawed as the rest of us, yet each is astonishingly impressive. Salad days though these be, it cannot be easy to be endlessly approachable and courteous, most especially perhaps with those who would ingratiate instant friendship.

Yet each person who comes into contact with any of the four goes away feeling like Foster's bus driver and Pinsent's fellow diners, as if their encounter was as memorable and valuable to the hero as it was to the admirer. This ability to create a feeling of meaningful individual contact is a gift usually wielded to most cynical effect by politicians, but it was joyously benign at Eton.

Inevitably, however, Pinsent and Redgrave are the most impressive of all.

Sport has many achievers and too many stars. Some are even called superstars. But some intangible factor marks out the few true greats. This quality cannot be faked, and it is difficult to capture in words, but when you are in its presence there is no doubting it.

Redgrave and Pinsent are the real thing, both of them. Redgrave may be the man in the history books but his great good fortune in linking up with so remarkable a human as Pinsent is impossible to over-estimate.

No doubt it will seem foolish to some but, watching them spread happiness on Saturday, a line from The Railway Children drifted to mind: "Sometimes very wonderful things do happen, and we spend most of our lives in the hope of them."

What Redgrave and the coxless four achieved was just such a wonderful thing.

Only the luckiest few among the 10,000 at Eton were in Sydney three weeks ago. But on Saturday it didn't seem to matter. It was not about being there. It was about being here.

If you want to know what here means, put your hand over your heart. That's here.

Scoff if you like. But for millions of us, here is where the memory of Redgrave's win will stay, always.