Ellis so proud to win bronze at Olympics

beat us – they were better on the day – but we had never played this pair before and it was all fresh.

“I’m just so happy we have done it for ourselves and it’s massive for the sport, so I’m so proud we can be a part of it.”

Langridge, at 31 unlikely to be competing at this level by the next Games, credited Ellis for staying calm when they raced into a 17-10 lead in the decider.

“I was getting nervous and thinking too much about every point, but thankfully Marcus stayed cool,” he said.

“This really is the most incredible feeling because we have worked so hard and we’re just so, so happy.”

The last Britons to collect an Olympic badminton medal were Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms in the Athens Games mixed doubles.

Ellis’s parents, John and Sheila, were inundated with messages of congratulation after watching the final on TV at home. In tears at the finish, Sheila said: “We could have done without it going to three because our nerves were shot to bits!

“But in that third game they really nailed it and we were just as speechless as them at the end.

“We are just so proud.

“Just getting to the Olympics was such a thrill for all of us, but we never imagined at that stage that we’d come to this.

“It’s fantastic for Marcus and Chris, it’s fantastic for English badminton and it’s wonderful for all the people around here who have helped and supported him over the years.

“He’ll now be ‘Marcus Ellis from Huddersfield, Olympic medalist’ for the rest of his life and that just sounds so, so good.” Ellis, based at the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes and a former student at Clough Head, Colne Valley High and New College, took up the sport as a seven-year-old at the sports centre in Slaithwaite. Unfortunately, the year ended on a big low as UK Sport’s decision to remove its funding from badminton puts a cloud over Ellis’s fuure. Ellis tweeted at the time: “I won a bronze medal in Rio three months ago and my sport has had all funding cut to nothing. What’s going on!” He is now asking people in Huddersfield to support a petition to get badminton funding back.

So proud to be part of winning a bronze medal for Great Britain at the Olympic Games.