OLYMPICS: Silver medal tears for Purchase and Hunter (From Oxford Mail)

OLYMPICS: Silver medal tears for Purchase and Hunter

3:57pm Saturday 4th August 2012 in Sport By Ed Mezzetti, Sports reporter specialising in Rugby, Cricket and Athletics. Call me on 01865 425456

BRITAIN'S men's lightweight double sculls crew of Wallingford's Zac Purchase and Leander's Mark Hunter felt they let the nation down today by 'only' winning silver.

The duo were agonisingly edged into second by Denmark in one of the most dramatic races of the London 2012 rowing regatta at Eton Dorney.

Defending Olympic champions Purchase and Hunter led the Danes by one second at the 1,500-metre mark before a titanic battle ensued.

Both crews had their noses in front briefly before Mads Rasmussen and Rasmus Quist surged to inch home in 6mins 37.17secs to Britain's 6.37.78.

All this had come after the race had to be restarted because Purchase's seat had broken inside the first 100m.

Afterwards Purchase and Hunter were physically and emotionally spent and had to be helped from their boat in tears.

"To lose an Olympic title hurts tremendously," said Hunter.

"There has been so much support, but we feel we let everybody down by not winning.

"We raced our hearts out, but it wasn't good enough today."

The silver medal represented a significant recovery from their previous outing at the Munich World Cup regatta in June where they finished sixth and last in the final.

"It has been a pretty hard season for us," said Purchase.

"We have had our ups and downs.

"Fair play to the guys who have won. They had an awesome race. We did our best."

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