From Oliver Holt in Sydney

Audley Harrison has always had the courage to be different and he has always had the education and the intelligence to talk a good fight. When he has failed, he has been ridiculed with a savagery that would not have been visited on the meek.

Until today, he stood accused of being a high-profile mediocrity, a lightweight super-heavyweight, but all that changed in four rounds at the Sydney Exhibition Centre. Gold hung round his neck and soon it will be pressed into his palm.

Harrison rejoiced by quoting the French dramatist, Pierre Corneille. “Triumph without risk is triumph without glory,” he said. He has marketed himself furiously as a thinking man’s boxer and many have dismissed him as a braggart. He has led a march on Downing Street, he has championed a union for boxers, he has written a thesis around a justification for amateur boxing and gained a degree from Brunel University. All of those accomplishments seemed to have more merit than his faltering boxing career.

Today, though, his plan succeeded spectacularly when he became Britain’s first Olympic boxing gold medal-winner for 32 years. The media coverage that he has already generated coupled with the attention that will now be lavished upon him will have fight promoters circling him like foxes stalking a chicken run. His achievements have caught up with his bombast and it is only a matter of time before he is trumpeted as the next Lennox Lewis.

Even on the eve of the Games, Harrison was referring to himself as “the Anna Kournikova of amateur boxing” because he said he was being courted by a host of suitors. Those suits will be pushed ever more ardently now and even though Harrison, 28, said in the aftermath of his victory that he would not be rushed into any decision, the new promotional partnership of Frank Warren and Frank Maloney will be the favourites to win the race for his signature.

It was all so much sweeter for Harrison because many experts had been predicting his early downfall. As far back as the spring when he made a series of appearances in New York at press conferences for Lewis’s fight with Michael Grant, wearing a white designer suit and milling around with the media, American fight journalists were dismissing him as another horizontal British heavyweight. They laughed at suggestions that he would win any sort of medal.

When the draw for the Olympic tournament was made, the doubts increased. In the first round, Harrison was paired with a Russian, Alexey Lezin, who had beaten him recently and who was expected to beat him again. Behind on points after three of the two minute rounds, Harrison rallied in the fourth and final round and forced a stoppage. He beat a Ukrainian and an Italian on his way to today’s final where he comprehensively outpointed Mukhtarkhan Dildabekov, from Kazakhstan.

To enhance his reputation still further, Harrison won the fight with an injured left hand that was so badly swollen this morning that he feared the doctor presiding over the contest would not even allow him to compete. Harrison and his own medical team stayed up half the night working on improving the swelling in the knuckle, which had risen to the size of a golf ball, and when the doctor examined him, he agreed to let him fight.

“It just meant I had to come through yet another test,” Harrison said. “I would have gone in there with one hand if I had had to and I would have still pulled it off because I was not going to be denied. I got a bit frustrated at one point and I was kicking a few doors because I thought it might restrict me, but I got a fax through from Lennox which ended with the words 'Nuff respect from one Olympic champion to another' and that made me refocus.

“I have already got a few offers on the table for when I turn professional and I am sure there will be a few more when I get back. But I am a man of my own destiny and I am not going to get involved in selling myself short or tying myself up in something that is not going to be to my advantage. If it goes wrong, I am the one they are going to be throwing the darts at so I’m going to get a good lawyer and there are going to be lots of negotiations.”

If his handlers are careful, Harrison should make a lot of money very quickly. Lewis, the world heavyweight champion who won Olympic gold for Canada in 1988, is talking openly about retirement within the next two years and there are no other British heavyweights remotely capable of stepping into his shoes. Harrison is the best candidate and the profile he has endeavoured to create should ensure that he is well rewarded financially even for fights against the succession of journeymen that will be fed to him first

Quite how far he is capable of going remains to be seen. He proved today that he can take a punch and he rocked the Kazakhstani with some big left hands and some solid jabs. Evander Holyfield, three times the world heavyweight champion, was still cautious when he got up from his ringside seat.

“There’s a world of difference between amateur and professional,” Holyfield said. “Audley did what was necessary today and he did it while he was hurt but he will need more tricks of the trade in his armoury when he suddenly finds himself going 12 rounds.

“He will find people hitting him harder. It is going to take a lot of work for him. Being heavyweight champion of the world does not come easy. For Audley, it’s just begun.”