Great Britain have secured silver in the team dressage event at Rio 2016 while Bryony Page has become the first British women to win an Olympic medal in the trampoline event.
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Great Britain won a shock silver medal last night, with Bryony Page making history on the trampoline, and are nearly certain to land another today through Nick Dempsey in windsurfing.
“I wanted to get into a final”, Page gushed afterwards, “and when I did it, going out the back and doing our warm-up, I was like ‘I’m an Olympic finalist!’ Then I said to Tracy [Whittaker-Smith, the British national coach] ‘If I want to get a medal, I’ve got to give it absolutely everything, no holding back.’ And that’s why I was so emotional when I finished my routine, because I’d hit that, I’d felt what I wanted to feel”. I just can’t believe I have an Olympic medal, I’m speechless, I can’t believe it.
Prior to winning Olympic silver, Page’s highest career finish was fifth at the 2015 world championships in Denmark.
Britain had never had a representative in an Olympic final before so when Page and Kat Driscoll broke that barrier, it appeared to be job done. I just collapsed and I was crying my eyes out.
“Finding out I’d got a medal, I couldn’t hold my legs up”.
“It’s absolutely incredible”, she said afterwards.
Sheffield-based Bryony Page performs.. “I’ve got my dinosaur lunchbox that my little brother got me”.
Opening her set routine with a floating three-quarter front somersault, a technically simple skill that requires extreme physical control, she appeared to hang momentarily in the air, weightless.
The 30-year-old, who just missed out on the final in London four years ago, was left with mixed emotions. “It was the best routine I could have done”.
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She said: “Coming in the big aim was to make a final – we have never had a British woman do that before”.
