Keeper Maddie Hinch was the hero for the newly-crowned champions as she stopped all four of the penalties from the world’s number one team before Holly Webb sealed their triumph.
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Then, as if by miracle (or just due to the fact that she’s super talented and good at her game) Hollie Weeb came in with the winning strike.
Helen Richardson-Walsh converted a penalty flick after Georgie Twigg was fouled and Webb kept her cool to net the decisive effort after Hinch had time and again denied the Dutch.
Schough had a huge chance to equalise five minutes from the end, but some frantic German defending finally managed to hack the ball clear.
The BBC said around nine million people watched the final and Great Britain Hockey hopes the team’s success will lead to a surge in people wanting to take part in the sport. Despite winning every game to finish top of their group, however, the top-ranked Dutch team only scraped into the final after beating ninth-ranked Germany 4-3 in a shootout following a 1-1 draw.
Helen and Kate Richardson-Walsh married in 2013 and, when asked what it meant to win Olympic gold alongside her wife, 34-year-old Helen said: ‘It’s pretty special.
A Maddie Hinch inspired Great Britain ended Netherlands’ dominance of women’s Olympic hockey with a 2-0 penalty shoot-out win in the Rio 2016 final.
Meanwhile there was joy for the women’s track team as Team GB won their first Olympic 4×100 metres medal in more than three decades, breaking the national record en route to bronze.
“I think it gives us confidence that it’s not over until it’s over. I was really nervous because I thought maybe I will just be a bit flat and empty”. We have some tough characters taking them and we have probably the best goalkeeper in the world in penalty shootouts.
The pair became the first same-sex couple to ever win gold at the Olympics and the first married couple to win gold for Britain since Cyril and Dorothy Wright in the sailing in 1920. “I was eight, I know it increased interest in hockey”, Kate Richardson-Walsh said.
“I really just got into it, especially on the run and I just knew it was going to come down to me or Non which is the worst possible scenario because the whole thing is I wanted it to be about us together”. The more the crowd booed the more I knew she would score. I felt like I was back at Bisham at our training base.
“It’s every bit awesome as I’d ever hoped”.
“It kind of dribbled into the corner, but it went in, so I don’t care”.
Britain have struggled so far in the athletics arena but there was a bronze medal to celebrate on Friday thanks to the women’s 4x100m relay quartet.
Team GB’s women won bronze at London 2012 while the men struck gold at Seoul 1988.
Men’s taekwondo -80kg star Lutalo Muhammad is expected to bring home at least a silver medal as well after he beat Azerbaijan’s Milad Beigi Harchegani to reach the final. “We worked so hard and a few years ago no one would expect that we could win the bronze medal”.
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Having qualified in first place for the semi-finals, Tom Daley will hope to win gold in the 10m platform final on Saturday evening at 8.30pm.
