IT'S INCH PERFECT!

Amazing British golden girls savour a win for the ages by narrowest of margins... and make a dream come true

- ANDY DUNN

FOR a couple of minutes, two Netherlands crew members could not get out of the boat.

And it was not only physical exhaustion keeping them in their seats, it was the anguish inflicted on them by Team GB's barely-believable surge to a gold medal that will go down as remarkable even by British rowing's gilded standards.

Over the 2000m race, the quadruple sculls team of Lauren Henry, Hannah Scott, Lola Anderson and Georgie Brayshaw were only ever ahead of the Dutch at one point... the finishing line.

Two hundred and fifty metres from that finishing line, British hopes of a gold looked finished.

"We kept it so cool to the end, we had the confidence," smiled Scott, as if nailing the Netherlands team with the very last stroke of battle had always been the plan. It was so close that the result needed a photo-finish for it to be ratified.

In horse racing parlance, Team GB had won by a nose, the official winning margin - after six-plus minutes of racing - recorded as 0.15 seconds.