Georgia Taylor-Brown wins silver for Team GB in triathlon - despite having bike puncture

Georgia Taylor-Brown, 27, overcame a bike puncture to win silver for Team GB in a wet women’s triathlon as Flora Duffy became Bermuda’s first ever Olympic champion.

Taylor-Brown went into the race as the reigning world champion and one of the favourites for the title but had to play catch-up on the 10 kilometres run after getting a flat tyre on the last lap of the bike leg.

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The race finally began 15 minutes late because of wet and windy conditions caused by tropical storm Nepartak which had been threatening the coast of Japan for several days.

Late on the final lap of the 40 kilometres bike leg, Taylor-Brown heard a hissing from her tyre and lost 22 seconds before setting out on the 10km run and quickly overtaking team-mate Jess Learmonth to climb into the medal places.

The silver medalist revealed she was on crutches 12 weeks ago after a stress response in her femur and feared she might not make it.

It meant she had to go through a test to prove her fitness a week before flying out to Tokyo.

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Taylor-Brown was thrilled with silver as she won Britain’s seventh triathlon medal over the last three Olympics and recorded the best result for a British woman.

But gold was well out of reach in the form of the phenomenal Flora Duffy, 33, who became Bermuda’s first Olympic champion.

Duffy was awarded an OBE in 2018 and showed herself to be the class of the field with a historic victory for Bermuda, whose only previous Olympic medal was a bronze for boxer Clarence Hill in Montreal in 1976.

It now means Great Britain sits in fifth place on the leadership table – with four gold, five silver and one bronze medal following efforts from Tom Dean, Tom Daley, Matty Lee, Tom Pidcock and Adam Peaty.

A version of this article originally appeared on NationalWorld.com

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