Olympic24: GB now has eight Rio 2016 diving quota berths

Great Britain’s diving quota places for this summer’s Games now sits at eight after more impressive performances at the Rio Olympic test event, while there were three gold medals to celebrate at the Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix. Here’s our review of the last 24 hours.

Rebecca Gallantree and Alicia Blagg finished sixth in the 3m synchro event at the Rio World Cup to secure Team GB a quota place for this summer’s Games, with Georgia Ward following suit in the 10m platform.

Gallantree and Blagg were in a strong position after the required dives with a score of 101.40 and moved into the optional rounds with confidence.

The duo dropped some marks in the final round to finish with a total of 299.28 to take sixth place and that crucial Olympic quota place for this summer's Games.

Georgia Ward secured Great Britain's second Olympic quota place in the 10m Platform after reaching the semi final.

The European silver medallist finished in sixth place overall with a score of 325.60 to secure her first world semi final and the vital Olympic quota place for GB.

Lois Toulson, who was competing in her first senior world level event, finished in 22nd place with a score of 279.20.

Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow qualified for the final of the men's 10m synchro after competing together for the first time at an international competition with a score of 411.00.

Mo Farah admitted he was delighted to give the home crowd something to shout about after winning 3000m gold at the Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix.

The double Olympic champion was cheered all the way at the Emirates Arena as he took to the track for his only indoor meeting of the season.

And the home crowd had plenty to celebrate as 32-year-old Farah held off the challenge of Kenyan Augustine Choge to win in 7:39.55 minutes.

"It was a messy race, it was quick to begin with, then it slowed down a bit," Farah told British Athletics.

"It's important not to think too much about times when you have a strong field like today.

"I've got a few cuts but that's racing, it happens. The most important thing was to win the race in front of the home crowd."

Farah's victory was one of three on the night for Great Britain, with Sean Safo-Antwi winning 60m gold and Lorraine Ugen topping the podium in the long jump.

Great Britain women might have been held to a 1-1 draw by Australia but Kate Richardson-Walsh admitted the game would live long in her memory as she became her country’s most capped female player of all time.

In Richardson-Walsh’s 356th international appearance, Great Britain took the lead as Sarah Haycroft bagged her first goal for her country.

But they were forced to settle for a third consecutive draw against Australia as Georgia Parker equalised moments later.

However, there was still cause to celebrate as Richardson-Walsh surpassed the 355 cap mark set by current assistant coach Karen Brown when she took to the field.

She said: “It was a really special moment to be out there today with Helen [Richardson-Walsh].

“We’ve played together so many times and we’ve been through so many ups and downs so it was really special to share this with her.

“Coming out here we knew it’d be tight and tough it’s always like that against Australia. It’s all to play for in the last match.

“It’s exciting for the crowd and exciting for us and we’re looking forward to the final game.”

Great Britain ended the opening day of four-man bobsleigh action in the hunt for a first World Championship medal in 77 years on Saturday afternoon.

Lamin Deen, Ben Simons, Bruce Tasker and Joel Fearon finished the first two rounds in fourth place, just two hundredths of a second from a bronze medal and three hundredths from silver.

“We started run one from eighth and said we wanted to move up a minimum of a couple of places, and we did that. We then fought hard in Run 2 and jumped up another two,” said Deen, after his crew recorded the fifth and third best start times of 5.00 and 5.02 seconds in snowy conditions in Igls, Austria.

“Hopefully, conditions will be clear tomorrow and we can really show what we’ve got at the start because the snow did hinder us, as it did everybody else.

“We’ve proved where we are as a crew in training with our starts, so hopefully we can drop below five seconds tomorrow and make it count down the track.”

England men were forced to settle for bronze at the European Badminton Team Championships following defeat to France.

Brice Leverdez, the French number one, got the underdogs off to the perfect start as he came from behind to beat previously unbeaten Rajiv Ouseph 10-21, 22-20, 21-8 in a 58-minute tussle.

Marcus Ellis and Chris Langridge needed to stamp their authority into proceedings and they duly delivered a convincing 21-11, 21-9 win over Bastian Kersaudy and Gaetan Mittelheisser, a pair they had lost to recently in Sweden.

Toby Penty backed up that win with a fine singles victory over Lucas Corvee 21-9, 14-21, 21-16, leaving England one win shy of successive finals.

But the higher-ranked pairing of Peter Mills and Tom Wolfenden lost out to Ronan Labar and Julien Maio 21-19, 21-17 to take the semi-final into a deciding rubber.

Lucas Claerbout raced to the opening game against Sam Parsons, ranked 57 places below the Frenchman at world number 139, before the Englishman staged a comeback in the second. However, Claerbout held on to win 21-12, 25-23.

Great Britain Senior Women are up and running in their EuroBasket Women 2017 qualifying campaign after they claimed a convincing 122-36 victory against Group C underdogs Albania.

In what was the first game to be played at the new National Basketball Performance Centre at Belle Vue Sports Village in Manchester, Head Coach Jose Maria Buceta registered the first win of his tenure.

Laura Deas was the top-finishing Brit as she came home 11th at the Skeleton World Championships in Austria.

Deas’ time totalled 3:38.41 minutes, while compatriot Donna Creighton was seven places further back.

The event was won by German Tina Hermann as she secured victory in 3:36.50.

Geraint Thomas will go into the final day of the Volta ao Algarve with a three-second deficit to leader Tony Martin after the pair retained first and second place overall on a flat fourth stage won by Marcel Kittel.

Kittel made it four wins from the four sprints he has contested so far in 2016 by comfortably beating Wouter Wippert into second place and Jens Debusschere into third in Tavira.

Martin and Thomas both followed in the peloton five seconds later, as did Ion Izagirre who remains 20 seconds down in third overall.

Thomas will now look to attack Martin on Sunday's 169km final stage, which ends with a 2.9km climb to the summit finish on Alto do Malhao.

Kelsea Purchall is the Youth Olympic monobob bronze medallist following a nail-biting finale on the penultimate day of Lillehammer 2016.

In snowy conditions in Norway, Purchall just edged out Team GB teammate Annabel Chaffey into fourth while Aimee Davey ended the day one place further back in fifth at the Lillehammer Sliding Centre.

Purchall finished with a combined time of 1:57.67 minutes from her two runs, 0.26 seconds off German Laura Nolte who took gold and 0.02 seconds shy of Mercedes Schulte from Austria who won silver.

“I’m amazed to win bronze and I didn’t think it was going to happen after my first run and sitting in fourth,” said Purchall.

“I really had to buck my game up for the second run and knew I had to try harder and perform better.

“I put down a good second run and had my fastest ever start time so I’m really pleased with that – I don’t think I could have done any better.”

Sportsbeat 2016