But the gym instructor, a two-time Olympian from Hungary, paused for a moment and said "well, yeah, maybe". That was all O'Hanlon needed.

So now, in the wake of securing a bronze Paralympic Games medal in the T38 100m sprint in Tokyo on Saturday night, O'Hanlon's aim shifts towards next year's Beijing winter Olympics.

O'Hanlon crossed the line in the final dead-heating with China's Zhu Dening on 11.00s in his fourth Paralympic Games appearance. Officials went to the thousandth-of-a-second to decide silver and bronze.

The Australian was awarded bronze, his seventh Paralympic medal. Not quite the same as Kurt Fearnley or Tim Sullivan, O'Hanlon says, but "I'm really happy with what I've been able to put together". Now the focus shifts.

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"I just want to qualify for the Olympics so I can become the first summer Paralympian to go to the winter Olympics," O'Hanlon said. "I'd also become the first person with cerebral palsy to go to the Olympics, that would be pretty cool."

O'Hanlon arrives in Australia from Tokyo on Friday, but that night he and his family board another flight to their adopted home in the Czech Republic.

That's where O'Hanlon spends the bulk of his time. When his winter Olympic dream gained momentum following the 2018 Commonwealth Games, O'Hanlon knew "I needed to be where the ice is".

O'Hanlon, who has cerebral palsy due to a prenatal stroke, is determined to succeed and create yet another piece of history.

"In 2016 I retired from Paralympic sport and I got pulled back in just because the Commonwealth Games was going to be in Australia and they were going to have my event," O'Hanlon said.

"I started training again and while preparing for that, I worked part-time with my parents as a landscape architect, they own a landscape architectural business. I was preparing for the Commonwealth Games and working there, and I realised I really didn't like sitting in the office.

"I took a look at myself and my skills and was like 'what am I good at?' Running in straight lines really fast. There's not many other places that is an advantage except for in a bobsleigh.

"It just so happened I was in the gym one day and I saw the Australian team competing at Pyeongchang. The gym instructor was a two-time Olympian for Hungary. I turned to him and said 'do you reckon I could make the team?'

"He paused for a second, he was definitely going to say no, and then he thought about it and was like 'well, yeah, maybe'. From then I just had to do it because there was a chance I had a sniff, so I thought I better try."

So now O'Hanlon will go from Japan to Australia to the Czech Republic without so much as a day on the ground in between.

The 33-year-old will spend a month in Europe before heading to Canada and the United States for the North American Cup season with an eye on qualifying for the winter Olympics.

January 16 is the cut-off date for qualification, at which point O'Hanlon needs enough points to be in the top 19 countries for the two-man, and top 17 countries for the four-man.

The Beijing winter Games looms as his last roll of the dice for an Olympic or Paralympic event. Next year's Commonwealth Games in Birmingham looms as O'Hanlon's sprinting swansong, with the Paris Paralympics perhaps a bridge too far.

"I'd love to say I'm not getting older and I'm Peter Panning it or Benjamin Buttoning it," O'Hanlon said.

"I think I will be too old by then and my body will have had enough. I really need to crack on with actually having a proper life.

"We don't live in the real world, athletes. My job is to run around in circles until I throw up, and that's what kids do. At some stage I have got to have a real job, and grow out of being a boy and look after my family.

"If I could earn enough money off my sport, off bobsleigh and athletics, to support my family, then I would. At the moment, I am a drain on my family's finances by keeping doing bobsleigh and athletics.

"At the moment I don't think I can say I go again."

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