Great Britain's women's 4x100m freestyle relay team have expressed their delight after picking up a bronze medal at the European Games in Baku this afternoon.
The team of Darcy Deakin, Madeleine Crompton, Hannah Featherstone and Georgia Coates finished in a time of 3:45.80 at the Baku Aquatics Centre, behind Russia and Netherlands.
The medal capped off a successful opening day in the pool for Team GB, who earlier saw Abbie Wood, Holly Hibbott and the men's 4x100m freestyle relay team claim gold.
After receiving their medals, the quartet spoke to Sports Mole about the performance and their hopes of adding to their medal haul throughout the week.
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Congratulations girls, are you happy with bronze?
Crompton: "Absolutely ecstatic. We went in third and we knew that the final was going to be a tough final, but we just gave it our all and basically hoped for the best, so we're really pleased with it."
Were you expecting to come away with a medal going into the final?
Crompton: "We didn't really want to put too much pressure on ourselves. Obviously we were hoping to medal, but we didn't want to say, 'right guys, we've got to get a medal here'. But we got the result we wanted, so it's all good."
And you've put the finishing touches on a successful opening day in swimming for Team GB...
Crompton: "It's amazing, especially when we were watching the boys win gold, it just gave us so much confidence to race, and it just boosts the energy so much. We were screaming watching it!"
You had a fair amount of support from the crowd too. Is that something you're aware of while racing?
Crompton: "Yeah, I guess so. We know that some of our parents are here cheering on. It boosts your confidence a lot going into the race knowing that you've got so much support behind you. It really helps when you're racing."
Georgia, you narrowly missed out on the medal in the 400m individual medley earlier this afternoon. Is it hard to switch focus between races so quickly?
Coates: "Yeah, it's hard to do so many events. I didn't quite get the result that I wanted, but I knew this was for the team and I just wanted to go out there and do my absolute best for them."
Was it tough to pick yourself up from that fourth-place finish, or is another race soon after exactly what you needed?
Coates: "I just put it behind me. This was for the team, it wasn't just for me, so I knew I had to do it. It's really boosted my confidence."
How ambitious are you of adding to this medal haul as the week goes on?
Deakin: "We've all got quite a lot of major events left so there are more opportunities for medals. We're just going to do our best and see how it goes, and take down as many people as we can. That sounded a bit violent actually, I don't mean that! We're going to swim our best. We can't control how other people swim."
Coates: "Oh definitely. This has really shown what we can do. We've got nothing to lose so we'll just go in there and see what happens."
Crompton: "It makes it easier to go into the next races thinking, 'I've got one medal now'. Now I just want to add more. I want more of them. Just standing on the podium watching the flag go up, it was amazing. I've never had anything like that before."
Featherstone: "We've already done so well in getting this medal. It just really boosts your confidence to know that you can do it, so I really think that we've got some good chances coming up."
Barney Corkhill
