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Emily Craig and Imogen Grant banished the demons of Tokyo 2020 by becoming the last Olympic lightweight women’s double sculls champions.
The event will be taken out of the rowing programme after the Paris Olympics, with beach sprints introduced in their place at Los Angeles in four years’ time.
So Craig and Grant will forever be enshrined in Olympic history after surging to gold at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, three years on from the most painful of near-misses at the delayed Tokyo Games.
The pair missed out on a medal in Japan by just 0.01 seconds, significant motivation for an incredible unbeaten 23-race run that brought them to Paris among the biggest of favourites at these Games.
No wonder the pair celebrated by throwing their arms into the air after winning in six minutes 47.06 seconds – 1.72 secs ahead of Romanian pair Gianina van Groningen and Ionela Cozmiuc – and Craig burst into a flood of tears on the podium.
“That was part of our story and this Olympics was the grand finale,” said Grant, 28, the triple Cambridge Blue who starts work as a doctor in Slough two days after Paris’ closing ceremony.
“Not every Olympian gets it right on the first try and it wasn’t that we did anything wrong back in Tokyo.
“We’ve put in so much work and we are such different and better people this time around. I think there was a certain inevitability to the racing today.”
Craig had kept a print out of that Tokyo photo finish on her living room wall, when they were actually only 0.5 seconds off gold, for motivation and may now consider putting up a photograph from Paris 2024 at her new flat.
“There was pressure, but also confidence,” she said. “We knew we had to go out and do something that we’ve done multiple times before.
“Just race the race plan that we have, that’s what saw us over the line.
“We took a step back after Tokyo and came away stronger, Imogen went away and completed her medical degree and I worked a bit.
We took a step back after Tokyo and came away stronger— Team GB gold medallist Emily Craig
“We found value in ourselves beyond rowing. Getting perspective realising we were loved and valued regardless of what we do on water spurred us on and gave us more confidence to be better versions of ourselves.”
Ollie Wynne-Griffith and Tom George claimed silver in the men’s pair, agonisingly overtaken metres from the finish line by Croatian brothers Martin and Valent Sinkovic.
The pair, who had won bronze at Tokyo in the men’s eight, led from the start and finished less than half a second behind the Croatians’ winning time of six minutes 23.66 secs.
Cheltenham rower George said: “We took 217 perfect strokes and one duff one and that can cost you. I don’t want to watch it back, it will be painful to do so.
“They put the pressure on and the pressure causes you to make a mistake. That’s fine, that’s Olympic racing, and we’re really proud of the way we raced.”
Wynne-Griffith said: “We pushed as hard as we could. We had the perfect race plan up until then.
“I wouldn’t say it was a mistake in terms of, I’ve done something wrong.
“It’s more a case of working so hard, your vision starts to go, your movement patterns start to go.
“Credit to Croatia, they put that amount of speed on, they put the pressure on the boat in the last 200.”
