PARIS, France -- Team GB were made to wait just a matter of hours for their first medal of the Paris Olympics as divers Scarlett Mew Jensen and Yasmin Harper claimed bronze in the women's synchronised 3-metre springboard event on Saturday.
It is the first medal of any colour for Great Britain in women's diving at the Olympics since 1960.
"That's what we think about because it has been a bit of a thing that the girls haven't had a medal in so many years," Harper told the BBC. "So coming into today we really wanted to put our best foot forward and show what we could do, so to come away with the first medal in so long in the women's diving is incredible, the perfect birthday present for tomorrow."
The pair scored 50.40 on their first dive out of five, enough for second place after the first round. Their next dives were not so polished, seeing them drop down the leaderboard, ranking sixth after their third attempt.
However, the pair roared back with their fourth dive -- they scored 71.10 performing an inward 2½ somersaults -- that took them up to third place, and they remained in bronze-medal position after their fifth and final dive before facing an anxious wait to see if any of the remaining five pairs would top them.
As it turned out, the GB team had done enough. Australia had the best chance of outdoing them but slumped to a score of 48.60 with their final dive, leaving Harper and Mew Jensen to leave with a medal.
"Denial," Mew Jensen said when asked what she was thinking after watching their competitors' mistake. "We thought they would have done it regardless."
"We're so excited, we are so pleased with ourselves," Harper added. "We came into this event knowing this is what we want and we had to stand on the boards and deliver and I'm so proud that we were able to do that this morning."
Mew Jensen revealed after the event that she suffered a partial back fracture three months ago that put her participation in Paris under threat.
"You have got to push that doubt to the side," Mew Jensen said. "Yas has been completely supportive."
Chinese pair Yani Chang and Yiwen Chen took gold having led throughout, with Team USA's Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook earning silver.
The duo's performance delivered Team GB their first medal of Paris, with the official target set between 50 and 70 medals over the next fortnight.