Gymnast Joe Fraser spoke of his pride in his team-mates after they fell just short of an Olympic medal. 

Fraser stuck his routines on pommel horse, parallel bars, and horizontal bar in the team final, in which three gymnasts from every nation perform on each piece with all scores counting.

But with young team-mate Luke Whitehouse falling on vault and deductions elsewhere, Team GB finished fourth for the third Games running, narrowly shy of a first team medal since London 2012.

They scored a total of 255.527 points which was more than two behind the USA, who broke their own duck stretching back to Beijing 2008. 

“I couldn’t be prouder of every single one of this team,” said Joe Fraser.

“That goes right back down to the strength and conditioning coach, the physio, the doctor, the psychologist, it is bigger than us out there.

“I’m so proud knowing that I’m a part of that team, we always give our all and push ourselves.

“We knew it would be a tight battle, there are quite a few countries that could have quite easily got amongst the medals. Fourth is disappointing but we’ve got lots of finals to look forward to.”

The opening rotation was a solid one on the infamously nervy pommel horse, with Jarman and Joe Fraser getting GB off to a positive start.

Whitlock, a two-time Olympic gold medallist on that piece of apparatus, lost some momentum in the middle phase of his routine but still scored an excellent 15.266.

Debutant Hepworth led the way on rings, improving on his qualification performance to post 14.800. 

The first setback came when Whitehouse fell on his Dragulescu vault and GB were chasing the game from then on, with a raucous crowd rooting mainly for their rivals USA. 

Whitlock stepped up to deliver good routines on parallel bars and horizontal bars for the team that finished on floor, a particularly strong suit, with Whitehouse and Jarman posting excellent scores.

“It was hard, I’m really gutted actually,” said Whitlock, who is one of over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme, allowing them to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support – which has been vital on their pathway to the Paris 2024 Games. 

“Fourth is always difficult, we’ve come fourth quite a few times at the Olympic Games now. 

“Right now, it feels quite raw but overall, we can be quite proud. Looking at each and every performance we’ve done, we did everything we possibly could. 

“Fourth is still a high position in the world and we can take a lot of positivity from that. 

“We’ve made history from the number of finals we’ve done in qualifications and now we can try and move forward, take confidence from today and hopefully (finals) can go to plan.”

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