"It's an indescribable feeling to win the first medal in the history of Jordan in all the sports," Abughaush said after his landmark victory. "It's also a great feeling to listen to the national anthem of Jordan being played in Rio in front of the whole world."

The reaction in Jordan was as one might expect.

King Abdullah II and Crown Prince Hussein called the 20-year-old personally to congratulate him, as did Prince Ali, who had personally sponsored the young man's path to Rio.

There was a large public celebration as Abughaush returned to Queen Alia International Airport and shortly afterwards the Jordanian Olympic Committee awarded him 100,000 Jordanian dinars. His coach, Faris Al-Assaf, received 50,000 dinars. 

Abughaush was born in the Jordanian capital of Amman. His father is of Palestinian descent, and his grandparents were re-located from the town of Abu Ghosh to Jordan decades earlier.  

After taking up the sport at a local training centre, Abughaush progressed to the point where, aged 16, he became the only Arab athlete to win gold at the 2012 World Junior Championships held in Sharm El-Sheikh.

Two years later, he won the Jordan Olympic Committee award as the country's most promising athlete.

After missing competition in 2013 because of a ruptured cruciate ligament, Abughaush resumed his upward progress and the Rio Games were preceded by successive victories at the Fujairah Open, the Egypt Open and the Asian Olympic Games Qualifier in Manila.

Tenth-seeded, Abughaush beat Egypt's seventh seed Ghofran Zaki 9-1 in the opening round in Rio to face one of the legends of the sport in Dae-hoon Lee.

The South Korean had already won world titles in 2011 and 2013, and would go on to win another in 2017. 

At the London 2012 Olympics he had taken silver after being beaten in the final by Spain's top seed Joel Gonzalez. 

In Rio, he was determined to go one better, but his ambitions were overthrown by the man from Jordan who progressed to the semi-finals with an 11-8 win over the second seed.

In the last four, Abughaush came up against Spain's defending champion and beat him 12-7.

The final pitted him against Russia's fourth-seed, Alexey Denisenko, and he found the way to unleash Jordanian celebration with a 10-6 victory.

While that was the high point of his career, Abughaush continued to enjoy success.

He earned bronze at the 2017 World Championships and, two years later, having moved up to the under-74kg class, he took silver at the World Championships in Manchester.

On that occasion, he lost 18-11 in the final to Italy's Simone Alessio.