Medal Alert: Men's Eight close out regatta with rowing bronze

Team GB's men’s eight finished off the regatta on a high as they claimed bronze in the final rowing race of Tokyo 2020.

Britain’s rowers were left with several near-misses on the water with six fourth-placed finishes in total, including Vicky Thornley in the women’s single sculls earlier in the day.

However, the men’s eight, led by Mohamed

Sbihi, who had been the flag bearer for Team GB at the opening ceremony, finished behind New Zealand and Germany for a second medal of the meet, with the young crew of Josh Bugajski, Jacob Dawson, Tom George, Sbihi, Charles Elwes, Oliver Wynne-Griffith, James Rudkin, Tom Ford and Henry Fieldman taking their place on the podium.

Sbihi, 33, from Surbiton, said: “We are a talented young crew. I feel like this week we haven’t been able to show ourselves properly, for one reason or another, and part of learning how to win is extracting a performance out of yourself.

“I feel like we did that today. We put ourselves in a position to challenge for the right medal, and on the risk of that you might end up losing a medal.

“I felt like we were able to compose ourselves through the whole piece. These moments are not guaranteed, the guys will try to be there in Paris and we have to take these opportunities when they come.

“Winning is hard. When you’ve won, to keep that run going is even harder sometimes."

In a thrilling race, New Zealand proved to be the class of the field, taking gold, while Team GB and Germany battled it out behind them for the silver.

It was the Germans who edged it by just 0.2 seconds, leaving the GB crew agonisingly close to a second silver of the Games

With seven of the eight appearing in their first Games, joining Rio 2016 men's four gold medallist Sbihi, it was a creditable way to close out the regatta.

They joined the men’s quad in bringing back a medal from these Games, while the young squad will look ahead to Paris in 2024.

Oliver Wynne-Griffith, 27, from Guildford, said: “Overall we’re very proud of the performance. We’ve had a pretty up and down week, we had some honest conversations throughout the week about our processes and getting back to our best.

“We’ve got a medal, it’s not the colour we wanted but there have been a lot of fourth places on the team, a lot of near misses and it’s good to be on the right side of one.

“I’m really proud of the guys, really proud of the row. We did everything we could to put the best race we possibly could on the day out there.

“Fair play to Germany and fair play to New Zealand for putting two really, really fast races together.”