Olympics 2024: Team GB record historic opening day medal haul
Great Britain is off to an historic start at the Olympic Games in Paris, winning medals on the opening day of competition for the first time in 20 years.
There was a silver medal for cyclist Anna Henderson in the women’s time trial and bronze for divers Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen in the women’s 3m synchronised springboard. It is also the first time this century that Team GB have won multiple medals on the opening day of the Games.
Harper and Mew Jensen secured the country’s first podium finish of the Games on Saturday morning with their performance at the Aquatics Centre, finishing in third after the Australian duo of Annabelle Smith and Maddison Keeney made a mess of their final dive.
“It’s a dream come true,” said Mew Jensen. “We knew that even if we did a good one, we would still be on the back foot. We knew that Australia needed to mess up basically. For that to actually happen, we were very shocked because that’s a very easy dive for them. They are very talented, very experienced, Olympic medallists themselves. It was very, very shocking. We knew we needed to deliver towards the end.”
Henderson went one better with her performance in the road race, in which the 25-year old braved a treacherous rain-sodden course to finish nearly a second faster than her American rival Chloe Dygert, the pre-race favourite. Henderson had finished fourth at last year’s world championships but is a relative latecomer to cycling, having been a junior national champion in skiing in her youth.
“I had half an eye on a dream on the podium, and I didn’t think I could come this far on the podium so I’m really pleased,” said Henderson
“I didn’t realise how slippery it was out there until I was on the course…..I thought, ‘I can lose a whole Olympic Games on one corner here’, so really take control and you gain all the good time on the straights. Last year I was two seconds from the bronze at Worlds [Championships] so I’m really happy to be on the right side of the seconds this time.”
It was a more difficult day for Henderson’s cycling team-mate Josh Tarling, who had been rated as the country’s most likely recipient of an opening day medal before the Games. The British champion suffered a puncture during the race and missed out on bronze by an agonising margin of 2.16 seconds.
The winning haul of day one breaks a run of four consecutive Olympics in which Britain was made to wait until day two to take home its first medal. Judoka Chelsie Giles won bronze and Bradly Sinden took taekwondo silver in Tokyo three years ago at that point. There were also two medals won on day two in both Rio 2016 and London 2012.
Not since the silvers for diving duo Leon Taylor and Peter Waterfield in Athens in 2004 have Team GB registered a day one top-three finish at the Games, but that was the second Olympics in a row when they achieved the feat after Jason Queally’s cycling gold on the first day of Sydney 2000.