Rio Olympics 2016: Tough day for Team GB as they narrowly miss out on medals in gymnastics and diving as David Florence flops in the canoe
Women's team all-around final dominated by the US whilst Tonia Couch and Lois Toulson flunked bronze medal dive
IT was supposed to be the day Team GB burst into life.
Medal chances across the whole of Rio.
A controversial judo player, “acquired” from Israel.
One of the world’s greatest eventers of all time, leading a team that had flown to South America confident.
The flying Scot of the whitewater world. And a boxing wannabe.
When David Florence’s relief at making the final of the canoe slalom turned, barely an hour later, into the sort of horror-show run which will haunt him for ever, the sense of foreboding was confirmed.
Florence was supposed to win gold. Two-time world champion. Twice an Olympic silver medallist. A man who had shown, time and again, he had the nerve, courage, bottle.
Instead, as Day Four became the Day to Forget, the Scot had an absolute shocker.
The man who wanted to go into space as an astronaut splashed down in a mess, losing his way so completely his 11-foot boat almost became lodged on a blue plastic barrier as he tried to haul it through an upstream set of posts.
Florence finished last of the ten finalists, nearly 15 seconds behind French winner Denis Gargaud Chanut, left only to moan: “Four years of preparation.... for that! It went catastrophically wrong around gates eight, nine, ten.
“I was a bit tight on the first gate of a three-gate sequence and it was unrecoverable from there. It left me so low. It feels like a waste of time.”
Florence, who at least gets a chance to put things right in the two-man version — he is again paddling with his London 2012 silver medal partner Richard Hounslow — tomorrow, conceded: “I just never got it back after the original mistake.
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“Sadly I’m used to more disappointment than success, so I’ll get over it.
“It comes down to one run and some guys get that run just right at the right time — but others don’t even get to the Olympics, I suppose.”
Florence’s despair was palpable. Then again, it was a familiar story.
From the moment Alice Schlesinger, the former Israeli who swapped the Star of David for the Union Jack, succumbed in her second-round judo bout, it seemed everything Team GB was hoping for was doomed.
Disappointment, frustration, anger. Mixed together as dreams were shattered.
Other than Florence, nobody will have taken it harder than William Fox-Pitt, even if his brush with his own mortality ten months ago will have put the blow of missing out on three-day eventing medals in more acute perspective.
Fox-Pitt, though, will forever look back on his Rio adventure and curse the split-second that cost him a miracle medal.
The Dorset rider’s faint hopes of completing his incredible comeback from a coma with a podium place had been destroyed 24 hours before he went into the showjumping arena.
Two clear rounds meant nothing after losing 30 penalty points after a refusal in the cross-country round. Take those out of his final overall score of 67.40 and he’d have had gold, simple as that.
But instead Fox-Pitt trailed in 12th on a day when Team GB’s spirits were left at rock-bottom, after Gemma Tattersall, Kitty King and Pippa Funnell failed to even make the final individual round.
Before that, Schlesinger went out in the second round on a penalty score against Anicka van Emden of Holland in the 63kg class, while lightweight Joe Cordina became the latest British boxer to exit the Games after losing a split decision to Uzbekistan’s Hurshid Tojibaev.
Schlesinger, 28, controversially switched flags for her third Games after her coach and boyfriend were bumped by home nation Israel’s judo association three years ago.
Not that it did her any good and her insistence that “it’s been brilliant being part of Team GB though,” sounded hollow as she added: “I’m happy I had a chance to have an Olympics with another team.”
As for Cordina, the Welshman, reigning European champion, conceded: “He hit me a lot in the body and slowed me right down.”
It was not just Cordina who took the body shots as he became the fourth British boxer to fall short so far.
Florence’s desperate and unexpected flop summed it up.
Bright hopes, left dimmed and disillusioned.
No glory, just misery. No colour, merely a cloud of gloom. It was supposed to be better than this.
In the gymnastics, the USA were as dominant as expected, whilst Tonia Couch and Lois Toulson flunked bronze medal dive to cap a miserable day for the Brits.