Tokyo Olympics: Great Britain's women beaten by New Zealand in rugby sevens
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Tokyo Olympics: Watch some of the best tries from the women's rugby sevens tournament
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Dates: 23 July-8 August Time in Tokyo: BST +8 |
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Great Britain's women suffered a blow to their Olympic rugby sevens quarter-final bid as a late New Zealand try saw them beaten 26-21 in the pool stage.
Team GB led 21-0 in the first half, but Michaela Blyde's hat-trick gave the Rio silver medallists a dramatic victory.
Earlier on Thursday, co-captain Abbie Brown's last-gasp try helped GB beat the Russian Olympic Committee 14-12.
The side's Tokyo preparations were disrupted by funding cuts announced a year before the Games.
After the men finished fourth on Wednesday, Dan Bibby described future plans for the sevens programme as "a joke".
"New Zealand are the best team in the world, and we absolutely rattled them in the first and second half," said Jasmine Joyce, who scored one of GB's four tries before getting sin-binned with a minute left to play.
"We just slipped off a bit in the second half, but medals aren't won on day one. We have got days two and three to put our wrongs right."
Great Britain's women, who finished fourth in Rio, will now fight for a quarter-final place in their final pool game against Kenya - also beaten 29-7 by New Zealand - on Friday (03:00 BST). The knockout stages then begin at 09:30 BST.
Defending champions Australia made a dominant start to the tournament on Thursday, beating Japan 48-0 and China 26-10.
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