Rio 2016: Day five wrap-up after Joe Clarke, Jack Laugher and Chris Mears strike gold for Team GB

A comprehensive look back on Britain's best day in Rio so far

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Joe Clarke didn’t make many ‘ones to watch’ lists ahead of the Olympics but turns out he should have done.

The British canoeist claimed Team GB’s second gold medal of the Rio Games on Wednesday when, out of nowhere, he won the men’s K1 slalom category with a scintillating performance.

The 23-year-old from finished 0.17 seconds ahead of Slovakia's Peter Kauzer. The 19-year-old Slovakian Jakub Grigar who went out last looked like he was going to pip Clarke to gold only to finish poorly triggering wild celebrations from the GB man.

Clarke is from Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, the same county that the swimmer Adam Peaty, Team GB’s first gold medal winner, hails from. There must be something in the water.

"It has a nice ring to it!,” Clarke said of being labelled an Olympic gold medal winner.

"Everything pieced together so nicely, I can’t put it into words. I knew I was capable but to put down that run in the Olympic final, it is a dream come true.

"It is hard to put it into words how much work has gone into this,” he told the BBC. “I have spent a lot of time here, I know this course like the back of my hand and it has paid off. There has been lots of ups and downs but it is just fantastic.


 Clarke celebrates after winning gold in the Kayak (K1) Men's Final 
 (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

"When I woke up I struggled to have breakfast I was so nervous with all the emotions. I thought if it goes to plan I could come away with a medal but to be Olympic champion it is something you dream about."

Clarke won two bronze medals in the K1 team event at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships in 2014 and 2015 and has won two silvers at the European Championships so his gold was something of a bolt from the blue.

Elsewhere, Jack Laugher and Chris Mears emerged from the dive pool’s murky green depths with gold around their necks.

The pair, who both train as part of the City of Leeds Diving Club, earned Britain’s first-ever Olympic diving gold with a series of near-perfect, synchronised attempts from the three-metre springboard.

Earlier in the day Chris Froome, Steven Scott, Sally Conway and Max Whitlock won bronze medals to add to the two silvers claimed in the pool overnight, completing a fine 12 hours for Team GB.

There was talk of gold for Froome pre-race but he was never in the hunt in the time trial road race unable to match the blistering pace set by the Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara. Froome finished more than a minute behind the winner but was content with his summer in which he also won the Tour de France.

“I’ve got no regrets today,” he said. “I gave it everything I had. Fabian was clearly the strongest guy on the road. If I’d only come five or ten seconds down on him, I may have been questioning whether I could have gone any faster. But a minute clear of me he was by far the best guy out there.”

Cancellera was just too good, powering to his second time trial gold more than 43 seconds ahead of silver medalist Tom Dumoulin of Holland. GB’s Geraint Thomas came home in ninth.

Scott defeated his compatriot Tim Kneale to win bronze in the men's double trap shooting.

Scott's perfect score of 30 against Kneale's 28 secured Britain their second Rio shooting medal, after Ed Ling's trap bronze on day three.

There was brief hope of gold in the judo for Team GB before Sally Conway also claimed bronze in the 70kg. She looked on top in her semi-final against the world number two Yuri Alvear of Colombia but the pair could not be separated in normal time. The bout went to golden score and Conway was pinned.

However, the grimace turned to the broadest of smiles just half an hour later when the 29-year-old from Edinburgh beat Austria's Bernadette Graf.

It was GB’s third medal in an hour on a rip-roaring day of Olympic action.