What could be better than becoming the most successful British gymnast of all time after winning another Olympic gold medal?
Well if you’re Max Whitlock, it’s probably your young daughter surprising you as you make your way through arrivals at Heathrow airport.
Max shared a video of the heartwarming moment Willow surprised him on Tuesday night and it’s a thing of pure joy.
Max’s family kept it secret that they were going to meet the record-breaking athlete at the airport as he arrived back from Tokyo, and the utter joy on his – and his daughter’s face – is plain to see.
“What an amazing surprise, my family kept it a secret so I didn’t think they were meeting me at the airport!” Max tweeted along with a video of the moment he was reunited with his family.
“Wow it feels good to be home.”
The 28-year-old Essex gymnast successfully defended his pommel horse gold from the Rio Games to take his medal haul to six – three gold and three bronze – nine years after impressing us all at London 2012.
![Max Whitlock of Great Britain competes during the men's pommel horse final of artistic gymnastics at Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/610a49af280000c0aa703c1c.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)
Ahead of competing, he spoke of the pressure of coming into Tokyo as defending champion, saying it made it a “million times harder” to succeed.
He told BBC Sport: “The pressure was there and I could feel it. Experience pays a lot in situations like this.
“Being first up meant I had to go all out. I couldn’t watch the scores. I had to go all out. That was the biggest routine I had been training for. I couldn’t have done any more.”