London 2012: Day Four - Zara and Wilson claim medal for GB eventers as Phelps makes history in the pool

The Great Britain eventing team of Zara Phillips, Northallerton’s Nicola Wilson, William Fox-Pitt, Mary King and Kristina Cook have won a silver medal on day four of the Olympics.

It takes GB’s tally to four medals from their home Games.

Their brave gold medal challenge ultimately came up short as European champions and Olympic title favourites Germany took gold, with New Zealand clinching bronze.

Cook’s showjumping round - she had just one time fault - meant Britain secured second place and gave Britain its 18th Olympic post-war eventing medal alongside her team-mates of Phillips, Wilson, Fox-Pitt and King.

Crowds gave Zara Phillips resounding cheers today as she put in a confident performance in showjumping.

The Queen’s granddaughter was third up for the British equestrian eventing team as she continued her promising Olympic debut.

Supporters who had braved gloomy skies in Greenwich, south-east London, fell into a hushed silence as she tackled the course, which included jumps featuring a miniature Nelson’s column and bright red post boxes.

But they erupted into delighted cheers once she had finished, waving Union flags.

Members of the Royal Family turned out again to support her, with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry cheering her on.

There was still a small number of empty seats in the arena, even though organisers sold extra tickets to fill unused spaces.

Michael Phelps tonight became the most decorated athlete in Olympic history when his gold in swimming’s 4x200 metres freestyle relay took him to 19.

The 27-year-old had equalled Larisa Latynina’s record earlier this evening with silver in the 200m butterfly.

However, the United States swimmer moved him beyond the Russian whose record had stood since 1964 to stand alone at the pinnacle with three more events to come.

Australia came out on top of their Ashes battle with Great Britain in the volleyball at Earls Court tonight, with their size and strength too much for the host nation to handle.

Andy Murray breezed into the third round of men’s tennis singles at the Olympic tennis at Wimbledon today, and the world No 4 will also go for gold in the mixed doubles alongside Laura Robson.

Murray had no trouble at all brushing aside Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen 6-2 6-4 under the roof on Centre Court but Robson and Heather Watson both lost in the second round of the women’s singles.

Robson’s brave fight against Maria Sharapova ended in a 7-6 (7/5) 6-3 loss while Watson went down 6-3 6-2 to 14th seed Maria Kirilenko.

Leeds-based weightlifter Gareth Evans has set a new personal best and smashed the Welsh clean and jerk record as he competed in the men’s under 69kg class at the ExCeL Centre in London on Tuesday.

Evans, 26 and from Holyhead who trains at Leeds Metropolitan University, finished eighth out of 10 lifters in the B group, while the A group of medal contenders will be in action tonight, following which his final placing will be known.

A mad Wrexham football fan, Evans said afterwards: “The atmosphere was great, there were more people in the arena than you get at a Wrexham home game!”

He lifted 130kg in the snatch, and just missed out on the eight-year-old British record with his final attempt of 133kg.

City of Leeds diver Sarah Barrow and Tonia Couch finished fifth in the women’s 10m synchro.

Second after the first two dives, they scored poorly in the third and fourth rounds to drop out of medal contention.

Great Britain coach Chris Finch was proud of his players in defeat as they fell narrowly short of an upset victory over Brazil.

Britain had held a one-point lead over the powerful South Americans with four minutes to go, but the game got away from them down the stretch as they lost 67-62.

While there was clear disappointment that they had not seen the job through, Finch could not complain about his players efforts in the face of a team tipped to be in medal contention here.

“I’m very proud of our guys,” Finch said. “Our goal in this game was to be in a position in the last four minutes to win the game.

“At that point it comes down to making plays and getting big stops, and Brazil were able to do that and consistently do that.”

In the fencing, Sheffield’s Husaymn Rosowsky, 21, was knocked out of the individual foil competition.