London 2012: Day 3 - Disappointment for Daley but gymnasts make history

Great Britain won their first men’s gymnastics Olympic team medal in a century when they claimed bronze at the North Greenwich Arena today.

Louis Smith, Max Whitlock, Daniel Purvis, Sam Oldham and Kristian Thomas scored a total of 271.711 as they produced a stunning team performance in front of a royal audience.

Britain had initially been awarded silver but an inquiry into the score of Kohei Uchimura’s pommel horse routine saw Japan claim silver and Britain downgraded to bronze.

China retained their gold medal with 2008 silver medallists Japan leapfrogging Britain’s score of 271.711 with an upgraded total of 271.952.

The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry led the support as Britain won their first Olympic team medal since the bronze at the Stockholm Games in 1912 to thunderous applause from the home crowd.

Guiseley’s Debbie Flood stormed from sixth place in rowing’s women’s quad sculls repechage to third place to pinch a place in Wednesday’s final.

Andrew Triggs Hodge of Hebden Bridge, the stroke of the men’s four, guided his boat home in first place in the heat of the men’s four ahead of Thursday’s semi-final.

York’s Tom Ransley and the men’s eight powered through the repechage into Wednesday’s final.

Also this morning in the swimming, there was heartbreak for the Rotherham duo of Joe Roebuck and Becky Turner.

Roebuck missed out on the semi-finals of the 200m butterfly by 0.02secs, which was exactly the same margin in which Becky Turner was denied a place in the women’s 200m freestyle semis.

Tom Daley and Pete Waterfield narrowly missed out on claiming Great Britain’s third medal of the Games in the 10m synchro diving at the aquatics centre.

The duo led after the first three rounds but a bad execution of the three-and-a-half somersault with tuck in the fourth round dropped them to fourth.

Over the closing two rounds they could not make up the deficit on the third-place pairing from the United States and finished fourth.

The GB men’s hockey team began their campaign with a convincing 4-1 win over Argentina at an atmospheric Riverbank Arena.

Doncaster-born captain Barry Middleton scored the first two goals.

“The first game you’re always the most nervous, even though we’ve had a good preparation, you never know where you’ll be when the tournament starts,” said Middleton.

“But we played some good hockey.”

Paul Drinkhall bowed out of the singles table tennis competition after a one-sided defeat to German right-hander Dimitrij Ovtcharov at the Excel Arena.

Drinkhall, 22, from Middleborough, a three-time junior European champion, lost 11-8 11-5 11-9 11-4 in the third round.

Drinkhall started his tournament with a routine victory over Kuwait’s Ibrahem Al-Hasan and went on to shock Yang Zi of Singapore in the second round before meeting world number 12 Ovtcharov.

“I knew it was always going to be difficult,” he said, “because he has a very challenging style, a great serve and uses top-spin shots very effectively. You have to get into him early and it was important that I won the first set.

“I couldn’t do that though I did do much better in the third set but he kept his cool under pressure and closed out both that set and the match.”

Rotherham sailor Paul Goodison, the defending Olympic champion, made a poor start to the defence of his laser title at Weymouth.

He is 17th going in tomorrow’s next race.