Danvers was almost caught on the line by the fast-finishing Anastasiya Rabchenyuk of Ukraine and waited for confirmation from the giant scoreboard that she had held on to set a new personal best of 53.84 seconds.

Jamaica's Melaine Walker won gold in a new Olympic record of 52.64secs ahead of American Sheena Tosta.

"I am elated to get this medal," said the 30-year-old Los Angeles-based Londoner. "It's been easily one of the worst seasons of my life and one of the best at the same time.

"Training was going brilliantly and then I got an Achilles problem in May that rendered me unable to run even 50m.

"At that point I got really stressed out but I got back to London and they fixed it in a week-and-a-half. Then in my first session back I tore my hamstring. It was just one thing after another.

"Ten days before the European Cup I pulled my hamstring, the doctor said it should be fine but in the race we got to 150m to go and I just could not respond. I said 'This is not normal' but they said 'Don't worry it's just a lack of training.'

"I then ran at the trials, got beaten, and the same thing happened, my body felt it was shutting down with 150m to go. We did a blood test and found out my white blood cell count was 3.6, with the range being 3.5-10 and 3.5 being really low.

"That was the reason why I was running so bad and I've had two more hamstring strains since then but I was watching that Colin Jackson show about nature or nurture and I noticed how strong he was mentally no matter what happened and I thought 'Do not give up on yourself mentally.'

"If you mentally stay on top of it you never know what your body can do and we managed to pull it together at the right time."

Danvers was selected for the Olympic team despite losing out to Perri Shakes-Drayton at the trials, although the 19-year-old did not have the qualifying time.

"If I was on the outside looking in I probably would have said I shouldn't be selected," Danvers admitted. "But the things people don't know behind the scenes are the things that the selectors know.

"They know what's going on every step of the way. They knew what the doctors were seeing and they knew how long it would take.

"They know I'm a championship performer, and that's what I told myself when I came out today."

Swimmers Keri-Anne Payne and Cassie Patten launched yesterday's medals haul with silver and bronze in the open water event, before Bryony Shaw won bronze in the windsurfing RS:X competition.

And late in the evening Danvers secured a second bronze.

Shaw earned her medal – GB's fifth from the sailing regatta at Qingdao – by finishing second in the medal race.

She was briefly in the gold medal position in the race but eventually had to settle for bronze – but was still delighted.

"I'm really, really happy. I came here wanting a medal and I knew that I had the ability," Shaw said.

"I started off with a conservative attitude and I think it paid off in the end."

But there was disappointment for Nick Dempsey in the men's event which followed as he slipped from second to fourth in the standings after finishing seventh in the final race.

However, there could be more gold for Britain today on the final day of action in Qingdao where Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson are second in the star class going into the medal race, just two points behind leaders Sweden.