Tokyo 2020: Great Britain's Georgia Taylor-Brown wins silver in triathlon

'I tried not to give up and I thought, it's not over until it's over,' triathlete Georgia Taylor-Brown spoke about the moment she realised her bike had a punctured tyre

Georgia Taylor-Brown overcame a puncture to win silver for Great Britain in a wet women’s triathlon as Flora Duffy became Bermuda’s first 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.

She quickly caught team-mate Jess Learmonth, who finished ninth, and Germany’s Laura Lindemann and then reeled in American Katie Zaferes to match fellow debutant Alex Yee’s achievement in the men’s race and win Britain’s seventh triathlon medal in the last three Games.

Speaking after the final Taylor-Brown said: "I had a really good swim and I got out and we had 35 seconds and I thought this is perfect."

She explained "The bike - we worked really well, I got a puncture coming out of the park with about 2k to come and I panicked - I didn't know what to do so I just rode on the flat.

"I lost maybe 15 seconds on the group. The first lap of the run was panic mode. I think I definitely paid for it the latter part of the run but it paid off."

Her parents spoke to Georgia after the race.

After shrugging in disbelief on the podium, Taylor-Brown revealed she was on crutches 12 weeks ago after a stress response in her femur and feared she might not make it.

She had to go through a test to prove her fitness a week before flying out to Tokyo and was thrilled to come away with a silver medal.

The 27-year-old said: “I wanted to keep it private. You don’t want to show your competitors your weaknesses, and so I did just say I was ill, but I’ve had six weeks of building my running back again.

“It’s not perfect, it’s not what I wanted. It’s not what anyone would want but I think I got myself into a really good position and I was as fit as I could have been on that start-line today with the circumstances that I faced.”