Bill Sweeney, British Olympic Association chief executive, said: “Though we are still deep in the middle of competing, one thing we know we will have had from start to finish and beyond is the incredible support of the Team GB fans, both in Rio and Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.
Advertisement
And while Tom Daley won bronze on the diving platform, he picked up silver on social media after this tweet was the second most retweeted post by a British athlete during the Olympics.
Arriving in a plane with a gold-painted nose cone and “victoRIOus” emblazoned on the livery, Britain’s Olympic team returned home Tuesday to jubilant scenes after the country’s record-breaking medal haul in Brazil.
Britain’s Olympic heroes arrived home on Tuesday still aglow from their success in Rio, with some athletes even describing the Games as better than its predecessor in London four years ago.
All 27 of Team GB’s gold medal winners were allocated a place in first-class as reward for their success, although many had already left Rio after their success came in the first week of competition.
Double gold medal-winning gymnast Max Whitlock and Nicola Adams – who defended her women’s flyweight boxing gold – were chosen to lead Team GB off the plane once it landed at Heathrow slightly ahead of schedule.
He said: “It’s great to be back on British soil again and I can’t wait to inspire the next generation of British athletes”.
“Four years later, somehow I became an Olympic medallist, so if I could inspire one person to turn up at the track, or take up sport or try a bit harder at training I’d be over the moon because sport, and the power of us and what we do, relies on national interest”.
The 40-year-old sealed silver this time around to take her overall Olympic medal tally to five and she wants the recent successes to have an uplifting effect on the country.
“To win the first medal on the Sunday evening, a gold and a world record, it was a fantastic achievement and permeated through the rest of the British athletes and allowed us to medal in more sports than we ever have before”.
“It has nearly felt like it has been a tough year for the country, a lot has happened politically in the nation in the last few months”, Grainger said.
Advertisement
Britain finished second in the final medal table behind only United States of America having won 67 to give them their highest ever tally from an overseas Games.
