Rio 2016: More gymnastics agony for Team GB as majestic United States women take gold

GB could only finish fifth and the golden glow went to the USA after stunning and cheeky floor performances from Simone Biles and Alexandra Raisman

Simone Biles and her United States team-mates show off their gold medals (Getty)

In the very same corner of the Olympic Arena where Louis Smith had fallen from the pommel horse just 24 hours earlier, Ellie Downie slipped from the balance beam in the women’s artistic gymnastics on Tuesday taking Great Britain’s hopes of a medal with her.

GB could only finish fifth and the golden glow went to the USA after stunning and cheeky floor performances from Simone Biles and Alexandra Raisman. Russia took silver and China bronze. The similarities in the two falls were uncanny.

Smith’s tumble cost the men’s gymnastics team a medal chance after he was asked at the last moment to do a harder routine than he had planned and there was nothing easy about the move Downie tried that tipped her over the edge: a backflip with rotation.

How anyone can expect to pull that off and land on a piece of apparatus the width of a house brick is beyond most of us mere non-flipping mortals. It’s been a bad couple of days for Downie, 17, who landed on her neck on Monday during qualifying when a somersault on the floor went wonky.

And so the wait goes on for a British women’s gymnastics medal, the last one was claimed in 1928 when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin and Mickey Mouse on screen in Steamboat Willie.

There was nothing Mickey Mouse about the British team’s start on the uneven bars, Ellie’s older sister Becky, the two-time European champion, hitting a 15.4 (gymnasts usually get marks between 13 and 16, the higher the better) and had solid back up from Ruby Harrold and Ellie (three of the five team members carry out each discipline) leaving GB third after round one. But then lightning struck again and Downie was down.

She hopped back on and continued with her routine but the damage was done with a 13. Claudia Fragapane followed with a 14.4 on the beam despite wobbling a couple of times and Rebecca Downie hit a 14.1 after an unsteady landing and suddenly Team GB were down in the depths of the table.

Amy Tinkler, at 16 the youngest member of the whole of the British Olympic delegation, earned a 14.4 on the floor but Fragapane, perhaps too pumped up, left the mat twice during her otherwise amazing routine and could only pick up a 14.1. GB, though, had crept up to fourth after three routines.

There is no faulting Downie’s determination and she pulled off a brilliant performance on the vault, steaming into the apparatus and twisting and turning in the air before landing steadily on the mat to gain a 15.1. Tinkler chucked in a 14.9 with her own death-defying act.

But it was too little, too late for Team GB. That wait goes on.