Rio 2016: Frances Houghton thanks late father after helping to take women's eight to Olympic silver medal

Houghton lost her father, Robin, six days before she was selected to compete in Team GB's silver-medal winning eight

Team GB's women's eight celebrate taking silver (Getty)

The Team GB women’s eight took silver on Saturday, coming in behind the pre-race favourites the United States, to add to Great Britain’s medal haul on Rio’s Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon.

The GB team were last at the halfway point but fought back brilliantly and overtook Canada in the closing stages to take the lead. They then had to fight off the surging Romanians to hang on to silver by just 12 hundredths of a second. The US won by 2.49 secs.

Canada set the early pace and were in the lead at 500m with Great Britain, European title winners back in May, 2.3 seconds back in sixth. They then drifted to three seconds out – and last - but put in a storming final 500m. USA did too, though, and won the title for the third Olympics on the bounce. Canada having been in the medals all the way missed out as they came home fourth.

It has been a testing road to Rio for the women’s eight of Katie Greves, Melanie Wilson, Frances Houghton, Polly Swann, Jessica Eddie, Olivia Carnegie-Brown, Karen Bennett and Zoe Lee. At one point there was talk of Rio silver medal-winning double scullers Katherine Grainger and Vicky Thornley taking a place on their boat.

The medal will be particularly sweet for Houghton, in her fifth Olympics, as while she was testing to see if she was good enough to remain in the eights, she lost her father, Robin, to cancer.

“With my dad passing away, it has been really hard,” Houghton said. “But it also gave me great strength because he really helped me get through some hard times in rowing. [His death] made me know for sure that I want to be rowing. I could have walked away from it – but he really wanted me to row.

“He passed away six days before I was selected but I think he knew that I’d done enough and the girls have been incredible. I’m so lucky to have the rowing to help me get through his passing and my dad to have got me through the rowing.

“The medal is for all of us. He is up there, with a great view and would have got to watch a great race.”