Olympics: Silver is Small Consolation for Two Distraught British Crews

There were two distraught crews among the British rowing squad yesterday, and both of them had won silver medals. The expectations within the team had become so high that both the women's quadruple scull and the men's eight were devastated by an afternoon that they regarded as a failure. Rarely can such success have provoked such misery.

Hardest hit was Katherine Grainger, the senior member of the quad. The Scot has now won silvers at three consecutive Games, making her the most successful female British rower in history. This medal, she said, was the hardest to accept of the three. "I think we're all devastated, I'm proud of what we've done in the last few years, but the gold was what we came for. We've failed to meet our own standards. We always said that silver wouldn't be good enough for us."

Shortly after saying those words, Grainger broke down in tears and was consoled by the embrace of her mother. Her crew-mate, Annie Vernon, was also crying, "I feel so empty - if we can't do it now, when will we do it?" For Vernon, 25, the answer to that question may well be at London 2012. But for Grainger, 32, this might prove to have been her last chance. She refused to consider her future, commenting only that her plans had stretched as far as winning gold and no further.

Whereas the women's quad were overtaken by China in the final 200 meters of the race, the men's eight trailed Canada throughout, but it did not make their defeat any easier to take. "It wasn't the result we were hoping to get," said the cox Acer Nethercott. "It's bizarre, the rational side of my brain is saying 'I can't be upset with a silver' but the emotional side is still very raw, because we were capable of gold.

"But we didn't get a clean start so we were always chasing the race. There's always things you could have done better, but when you come away with silver not gold those questions are going to haunt you. My rational side has got to wrest control because I'm probably only going to stand on an Olympic podium once in my life, so I've got to make sure I enjoy it."

David Tanner, performance director of UK rowing, rightly pointed out that the reactions of the eight and the quad were an indication of how strong the squad has become. "This may sound strange, but a big positive is that we've seen guys win silver medals and they're far from ecstatic about it. That's a strong sign of what we're aiming for."

If this squad, the most successful in Britain's Olympic history, needed any extra motivation for 2012, they have found it with the silvers they won yesterday.