Paris 2024: Georgie Brayshaw and Lois Toulson lead Yorkshire and Team GB bid for medals on day five

After Tom Pidcock’s golden coronation in the mountain biking at Elancourt Hill on Monday and Yasmin Harper’s bronze for City of Sheffield and Team GB in the 3m synchro on Saturday morning, the trail has run a little cold.

With the athletics not due to start for another day and then accelerate over the weekend with Sheffield sprint sensation Louie Hinchliffe featuring in the 100m, and the track cycling where Yorkshire has some genuine medal hopes also not getting underway until the second week, attention turns to the water on day five of the Olympics.

First up, Leeds rower Georgie Brayshaw looks to win an Olympic medal at the age of 30, having been a late developer in the sport.

Brayshaw loved horses in her youth but a riding accident when she was 15 left her paralysed down one side meaning her recovery to full-blown Olympian is remarkable, especially since she didn’t start rowing seriously until she was in her early 20s at Leeds Rowing Club.

She and her women’s quad sculls crew go into Wednesday morning’s final as the favourites having breezed into the final by winning their heat on Saturday.

“It’s the same people I’ve raced with for the past three years,” Brayshaw said of her sculls crewmates Lola Anderson, Hannah Scott, and Lauren Henry, who she has won European and world titles with in the last 12 months.

“The same race, the same water. Just keep it simple, keep it the same, keep it familiar.”

Their final at the Vaires-Sur-Marne Nautical Stadium begins at 12.38pm.

Roughly an hour and a half earlier, Huddersfield’s Lois Toulson contests her third Olympics by the age of 24.

The City of Leeds diver goes for glory in the 10m synchro with Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix at the Aquatics Centre. Toulson finished a disappointing seventh with Eden Cheng in Tokyo three years ago when she was expected to improve on the fifth place she achieved when just a 16-year-old in Rio five years earlier.

But Toulson goes into these Olympics in a lot better shape having won silver and bronze alongside Spendolini-Sirieix in the two most recent world championships held over the past 18 months. Their story mirrors that of Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen, who were thrown together midway through this shortened Olympic cycle and immediately clicked with medals in the same two world championships acting as a precursor to their bronze-medal win in Paris on Saturday.

Team GB’s medal trail slowed on day four despite the rising temperatures in Paris. After the Pidcock-inspired six medals won on Monday which took them to six overall, they added just one gold through Nathan Hales in the shooting trap and went into last night’s swimming finals hoping for more from their 4x200m men’s relay squad.

Provided the pollution levels in the River Seine are at a legal level, Team GB could get back in the medal hunt in the triathlon early on Wednesday, through Beth Potter in the women’s and Alex Yee in the rearranged men’s race.