Great Britain's women's 4x200m freestyle relay team have expressed their delight at winning bronze on the final day of swimming action at the European Games.
A quartet of Hannah Featherstone, Darcy Deakin, Holly Hibbott and Georgia Coates finished in a time of 8:04.84 at the Baku Aquatics Centre to maintain Team GB's record of medalling in every relay event at the Games.
Russia and Netherlands took the first two places, with the latter holding off a late surge from Coates to clinch silver.
After collecting their medals, the team spoke to Sports Mole about their performance and how their preparation for the race was far from ideal.
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Well done girls, are you happy with that bronze medal?
Deakin: "Yeah, definitely. We knew going into the final that everyone was going to change their teams - we changed our team. It was quite tough anyway but to come out with a bronze medal, especially because everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and to have all gone a lot faster than this morning is really good."
What sort of things went wrong?
Deakin: "We held the start for quite a long time, so Hannah panicked. My goggles snapped just before I dove in."
Coates: "I forgot one of my hats!"
Hibbott: "I got the wrong accreditation."
Deakin: "But coming out with bronze, I think we're all pretty chuffed with it."
You must be happy with the time as well, taking almost 10 seconds off your performance in the heats?
Deakin: "And especially how close we got as well. In the rest of the relays there has been a massive gap even between second and first so to have it just over a second between first and third, that's pretty amazing."
You almost caught Netherlands at the end there Georgia - what was going through your mind in that final 50m?
Coates: "I knew she was going to go out fast because she was the 100m champion, so I didn't worry when she went off, and I just tried to catch her at the end when I knew she'd probably start to die."
Was there a tinge of disappointment having come so close to winning silver?
Coates: "Just to come away with a medal is amazing. We all did so much faster than this morning. To come 10 seconds faster, it's just so good to get a medal."
How would you assess GB's performance overall in the pool?
Coates: "Amazing. To come second behind Russia in the medal table is just amazing and we've got medals in all the girls' relays and all the boys' as well, so that's just so good as well."
Featherstone: "The team spirit as well has been so good. It's been really supportive."
Barney Corkhill
