After Tom Mitchell led Great Britain to an historic silver in the first ever men’s Rugby 7s competition at the Olympics last week, followed by Constantine Louloudis’ men’s coxless four team comfortably winning gold, Oxonians in Rio were looking at an already successful games.
Their medal haul would only increase, however, through the successes of the British coxed eight teams, with both the men’s and women’s crews containing Oxonian representation.
Firstly, last Saturday morning, the women’s eight team coxed by Zoe de Toledo earned their first medal in Olympic history, improving on their fourth-placed result at the 2015 World Championships. Though they could not quite find the performance to beat the imperious American crew, who now have claimed their third consecutive gold medal in this event, the British team battled hard to claw their way back from last place at the halfway point to finish second, even making an unlikely victory appear a possibility in the last 500m. In the end, the US pulled away to win comfortably by almost two and a half seconds, whilst Zoe de Toledo’s team managed to hold off Romania in third by 0.12 seconds.
After the success of the women’s crew, Andrew Triggs-Hodge and Paul Bennett took to the water for the men’s event. The race was one of a wholly different character, with Britain leading from start to finish to comfortably take the gold medal ahead of Germany and the Netherlands. It may not quite have been the margin of victory that the Americans enjoyed in the women’s race, but the 1.33 second gap to the silver medallists was more than enough to demonstrate the ease of victory.
Following Saturday’s victory, Triggs-Hodge also now finds himself a three-time Olympic gold medallist, having won the men’s four titles in Beijing and London.
Although the crews of the men’s and women’s coxed eight managed to add to the medal haul of Oxonians competing in Rio, the British men’s hockey team, including Dan Fox, could not quite emulate such successes.
Needing a result against Spain, and hoping that Belgium would complete a 100% record in the group stage against New Zealand, Britain could only manage a 1-1 draw against the Spanish, whilst their exit was confirmed as Belgium succumbed to a 3-1 defeat at the hands of New Zealand.
Despite the loss, Oxonians in Rio have enjoyed remarkable success. The gold and silver of the rowing competitions last Saturday added to those in the rowing and rugby, respectively, earlier last week to complete a set of medals that would place Oxford 29th in the medal table if they were their own team, trumping the likes of Denmark, South Africa, Sweden, and a host of other nations including Britain’s own neighbours Ireland.
With Britain having their most successful overseas games in their history, the Oxonian delegation can share hugely in that pride of triumph.
