What a race! Kelly Holmes grabbed hold of a dynamic women’s 800 metres Olympic final with a piece of nerve, verve, strength and sheer bloody-minded determination, forcing her way past the defending champion, Maria Mutola (MOZ), barely three metres from the finish.

Such was the closeness of the blanket finish, in those next three metres, Mutola went from gold medal position to fourth, as Hasna Benhassi (MAR) and Jolanda Ceplak (SLO) went by her.

Holmes therefore won Britain’s first Olympic middle distance gold medal since 1984, recording a season’s best 1:56.38. Benhassi, from Morocco, was given a national record of 1:56.43 to go with the silver medal, but Ceplak was so close, that the Slovenian was given the same time.

In fourth, Mutola, who had been beaten only once in her previous 38 outings at the distance, also set a season’s best of 1:56.51. That was clearly no consolation: the Mozambican stormed from the track, avidly watched an action replay on a monitor, and clearly angered at the end result stormed through the mixed zone.

To think that a week ago, Holmes was not even going to run in this event. Such is the stuff that Olympic dreams are made.

Encouraged by her good form over two laps, Holmes opted to try both the 800 - in which her training partner, Mutola, was widely assumed to be unbeatable - as well as the 1,500. Tonight’s race unfolded perfectly for the 34-year-old from Kent.

With a clear race plan, Jearl Miles-Clark (USA) sped to the front, setting a seemingly suicidal pace that stretched the eight runners into single file by 200m, with Ceplak, Maria Cioncan, of Romania, Russia’s Tatyana Andrianova and Zulia Calatayud, from Cuba, all hanging on to the American’s coat tails.

“That first lap really knocked me out,” said Ceplak, who as Miles-Clark reached the bell in 56.37, was only fifth, shadowed by Mutola, and with Holmes, as she had done in the preliminaries, patient waiting, last of the eight, only just moving alongside Benhassi as they started the final circuit.

Holmes did her utmost to go with Mutola as the champion made her move down the back straight. Off the final bend, as Mutola ran in lane two to pass the fading front-runners and get on terms with Miles-Clark on the kerb, Holmes was running in lane three.

Into the straight, and the familiar tale of women’s 800-metre running of the past decade, with Mutola outlasting all-comers, seemed set to be repeated. But Holmes was having none of it.

As Benhassi and Ceplak both came wide, the Slovenian resurgent from seventh place at the 150 mark, they were quickly closing on the front two, the American drifted backwards.

But Holmes would not be beaten. The woman who placed fourth at the 1996 Games and third four years ago knew that this was her last, best chance to make Olympic history.

All four runners seemed to cross the line in a blink of an eye. The finish was so close that Holmes herself did not realise she had won until she saw a replay on the big screen beneath the Olympic flame. The expression on her face - a mixture of disbelief and unbridled joy - spoke volumes.

And now Holmes has another race to run in the morning.

On Friday, Hasna Benhassi claimed the competitive scalp of the defending champion Maria Mutola in the first-round heats of the Olympic 800 metres. Tonight, she dealt a psychological blow to Jolanda Ceplak, the holder of the World indoor record, passing the Slovenian in the home straight to clock 1:58.59. Morocco’s former IAAF World indoor 1500m champion must rate her chances of success at these Athens Games very highly going into Monday’s final now.

In fairness, Mutola looked more comfortable than the day before, dictating a stronger pace in the third semi-final, leading the field through halfway in 57.84 and coming home, her rivals strung out behind her, in 1:59.30.

Kelly Holmes had won the first semi-final in impressive style. Jearl Miles-Clark, of the United States, led to the bell in 57.18, with Russia’s Tatyana Andrianova at her shoulder. At this point, Holmes was last.

But the Commonwealth 1500m champion then started to pick her way through the back markers, arrived at the shoulder of the leaders 150 metres from home, and when Andrianova made her move to win the race, Holmes kicked past her with telling effect.

Holmes’s 1:57.98 was a season’s best time and the fastest qualifier for the final, which will be missing Svetlana Cherkasova, only third in the final semi-final in 1:59.80 - both fastest losers into the final came from the first semi-final, where Holmes demonstrated the benefits of simple, even-paced running. The final could be a tactical master class.

Winning an Olympics is never supposed to be straightforward, although after three IAAF World titles outdoors, Maria Mutola’s progress towards a second Olympic 800 metres gold medal was widely assumed to be a foregone conclusion. Wrong.

The 31-year-old from Mozambique began the defence of her Olympic title looking somewhat sluggish tonight. Perhaps, after years of paced racing on the Grand Prix circuit, running a first lap in outside 62 seconds is alien to Mutola, who tucked herself in fifth place for the first 550 metres of the first of six heats, where only the first three finishers were guaranteed to advance to the semi-finals on Saturday.

When Mutola did respond to the attack of Hasna Benhassi, however, she made no immediate impression, coming home second, 2:01.20 to 2:01.50, and looking as if she would prefer a more evenly run race.

More impressive was Kelly Holmes, the winner of the third heat in 2:00.81. The Briton, the runner-up to Mutola at last year’s World Championships in Paris, had dithered over whether to race the two-lap event in Athens until earlier this week. Here, it appeared she need never have doubted herself.

After Letitia Vriesde, of Surinam, had set the early pace, reaching the bell in 59.73sec, Holmes found another gear off the final bend and breezed past Vriesde and Jearl Miles Clark, from the United States, taking the heat in 2:00.81.

Maria Cioncan, from Romania (1:59.65 - a personal best), and Jolanda Ceplak, of Slovenia (2:00.65), both won their heats in commanding style, and while Russia’s Svetlana Cherkasova’s 2:03.60 and Tatyana Andrianovas 2:03.77 heat-winning times were unremarkable, the style of their running suggested that there could be a lot more to come in the later rounds.