By the time you read this, it might have sunk in for Donny Robinson.

Reached by the Register at about 11:40 p.m. local time on Thursday night, Robinson’s bronze-medal performance in the BMX race in Beijing was barely four hours old.

It had not hit him that he had won an Olympic medal.

“Of course not,” said Robinson, speaking at about 2:40 p.m. Friday in China.

“We just finished the race, then we had the medal ceremony, now we’re doing TV. It probably won’t set in until I lay my head to sleep.”

Robinson — who finished behind Latvia’s Maris Strombergs and teammate Mike Day of San Clemente — indicated that he felt fortunate to come away with a medal at all in BMX’s maiden Olympic voyage.

He crashed in a qualifying round two days earlier, waited out a rainout and then crashed again in Friday’s semifinals — one run before the medal race.

“It’s amazing when I think about what it took to get here. The last two days, I wasn’t riding well at all. It took a lot to come back, so I’m way psyched about that.”

Robinson deftly avoided another large pileup in the final, narrowly escaping unharmed and charging to the finish just behind Strombergs and Day.

Overall, Robinson said the Olympic experience has been “crazy.”

“Stepping off the plane, the Chinese did such an outstanding job with everything, just on-point perfect. We got to see the 100-meter final, the gymnastics, and as for BMX we put on a great show. It’s an experience I’ll never forget.”

Though he won’t even depart for American soil until Aug. 25 — Robinson will stay in Beijing for Sunday’s closing ceremonies — the Napa superstar is already looking forward to the 2012 Games in London.

“Of course I want to go to London,” said Robinson. “That’s the next big race I’ll be training for.”

In four years, Robinson will be 29 years old — the same age as current teammate Kyle Bennett.

“He’s in the best shape of his life,” Robinson said of Bennett, “so it’s definitely possible to be competitive then.”

After his interview, Robinson said he and his teammates would be “pretty packed with stuff” for the next seven hours or so.

“I’m just on the bandwagon now,” he said.