Gold-nosed plane carries Brits home
LONDON: Great Britain’s triumphant Olympic team returned home yesterday when a gold-nosed aircraft brought home a host of athletes clutching gold, silver and bronze from the Rio Games.
Great Britain’s most successful Olympic Games in more than a century saw it finish with 67 medals, 27 of them gold, with only the United States ahead in the overall standings in Rio.
320 athletes and support staff travelled back from Brazil in the British Airways Boeing 747 with “victoRIOus” emblazoned on the side.
Some of the medallists’ families — who have themselves given up hours of their time to support their relatives in their sporting ambitions — were present to watch them land at London’s Heathrow Airport and were then ushered into a private lounge.
Cycling saw Britain’s ‘golden couple’ of Jason Kenny and fiancée Laura Trott, triumph in the velodrome.
Kenny matched British cycling great Chris Hoy’s tally of six golds with three wins in Rio, while Trott won two of her own to take her total to four.
Kenny, who returned earlier with Trott, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain yesterday: “It is now sinking in. As we go out for dinner, people are coming up and saying ‘Well done’ and buying us drinks. I don’t think we have bought a single drink since we have come back.”
Several British competitors defended titles won in London, notably Mo Farah who again took gold in both the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres and so became the first man since Finland’s Lasse Viren in 1976 to complete Olympic long-distance running’s ‘double double’.
Farah was not alone in being a repeat champion, with boxing’s Nicola Adams and taekwondo’s Jade Jones also repeating their victories of four years ago.
Several athletes posted tweets during the flight back and, after landing, Alastair Brownlee tweeted a selfie at the top of the plane stairs with the caption: “So #goodtobBAck. What a welcome.”
France’s Olympic team also landed in Paris yesterday after winning 42 medals in Rio, including 10 golds, a postwar record for the overall medal count.