Rio Olympics: Hockey stars Kate Richardson-Walsh and wife Helen are first British married couple to win gold since 1920
LAURA TROTT and Jason Kenny aren’t Team GB’s only golden couple.
Kate Richardson-Walsh and wife, Helen, were part of the team which beat the Netherlands in a tense final and became Britain’s first married couple to each win gold at an Olympic Games since Cyril and Dorothy Wright’s triumph in 1920.
They history-making pair were joined by team-mates — including Nicola White, who scored the crucial late equaliser and heroic goalkeeper, Maddie ‘Mad Dog’ Hinch — for a victory party on a rooftop restaurant in Rio.
Helen and Kate are now the first same-sex married couple to win a gold medal in Olympics history.
The Reading pair defied the odds to make Team GB’s hockey squad for a fourth time.
They married in 2013 and Kate, 36, retired a year later, but made a comeback for Rio.
While, Helen, 34, is back after two bouts of back surgery in a year.
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Ahead of the final, Kate — who played with a metal played in her face at London 2012 just five days after breaking her jaw — said: “We just want to show that it’s a normal thing. We’re not out there shouting it, it’s just part and parcel of who we are.”
And Helen added: “It was definitely a conscious decision (to come out). If you are really open about it, people say, ‘Why do you make such a big deal about it?’
“If you don’t mention it you could be seen as hiding it, which we didn’t want either.”
“Those messages we get from time to time have made it really pleasing that we have been so open.
“When people say ‘you’ve helped me come out to my parents’ or ‘deal with my own sexuality’ it’s really powerful.”
Trott and fiancee Kenny could become the third couple to strike gold at Tokyo 2020.