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Tokyo Olympics: Georgia Taylor-Brown refuses to be deflated at puncture as she recovers to win silver
For Georgia Taylor-Brown, there was no deflation in an Olympic silver, just in the remnants of her bike’s punctured tyre.
Emulating the feat of her British teammate Alex Yee a day earlier, she recovered from her cycling misfortune to battle back to a second place that had seemed unattainable at one stage.
Even without the flat, she was gracious enough to admit she would never have overhauled Flora Duffy, who crossed the line 74 seconds clear for the first gold medal in Bermuda’s history.
If different choices had been made, Duffy could have been competing on the same British team as Taylor-Brown. Her mother was born in Burnley, her father hailed from the Lake District, she even went to boarding school in the UK for four years.
But her heart had always said Bermuda and the 33-year-old event favourite, bidding for Bermuda’s second Olympic medal after a boxing bronze back in 1976, delivered the hammer blow to her second nation.
Duffy was once the recipient of an OBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace and, while an honour, Olympic gold is likely to take pride of place back at home.
For Taylor-Brown, a silver had looked unattainable 12 weeks ago when a stress reaction was diagnosed in her leg and she was consigned to two weeks on crutches at a time when she would have been ramping up her training to Tokyo.
At one point, making the Games had been touch and go, needing a late fitness test to prove she could board the plane with teammates Vicky Holland and Jess Learmonth. It was apt the two smothered her in celebration such is the bond between the trio.
Of that injury, she said: “That was a bit of a shock. My training had gone so well before then, though, so I knew I had all that in the bag.” It meant she hadn’t raced since September last year, and publicly blamed her more recent race withdrawals on illness – “you don’t want to show your competitors your weaknesses”.
She had just six weeks of running in training post-injury, not that it showed as she was forced to play a quite dramatic catch-up over the 10kilometre run.
The pre-Tokyo lay-off had one advantage in that it enabled her to train full-time in the water, that reflected in her being in the leading group of swimmers to enter the bike transition along with Learmonth, who was in first at that point. Learmonth’s swim time was just 20seconds slower than that of the men’s Olympic champion 24 hours before.
A lead group of seven riders quickly pulled out a lead of over a minute but the pace was such that it was whittled down to six, then five and finally four when Taylor-Brown punctured on the final lap.
“I did have a panic,” she admitted. “I decided not to stop and change my wheel and just see what happens now.”
What transpired was some undertaking. She fell 22 seconds behind but knew she was among the strongest runners in the field. Part of that is genetic, her father Darryl was an accomplished 800m runner in his heyday, including Seb Coe among his contemporaries.
She steadily climbed up the order but, for a time, could not make up the five seconds to Katie Zaferes before she eventually caught and passed the American at the bell for the final lap of the run.
“I went really hard for the first lap of the run, I suffered after that but it paid off,” she said while admitting that Duffy was a class apart on the day. “I don’t think I had the speed that she had today. I’d planned for hot weather so I planned for a slower race, which would favour me, because obviously the lack of running I’ve done recently. I’m more than happy with silver.”
As it was, she still got the national anthem played out – God Save the Queen the official anthem of Bermuda.
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