Olympic silver for Chambers brothers

Along with team mates Rob Williams and Chris Bartley, they battled their way to second place on Day 6 of the 2012 London Olympics at Eton Dorney Rowing Centre with a time of 6:03.09.

Denmark set the pace from the beginning with Great Britain holding onto third place from the halfway mark.

Team GB moved up the ranks to second place as they approached the finish line - but South Africa surprised everyone by snatching victory in the end, leaving Denmark with bronze.

The brothers were aiming to become Northern Ireland’s first gold medal winners since 1988, when Stephen Martin and Jimmy Kirkwood won gold as part of the GB men’s field hockey team in Seoul.

Richard Chambers said: “That was really, really brutal. We were just fighting, fighting through the whole thing to get ourselves back into contention.

“We struggled to keep with the pace of the other crews in the first quarter of the race but we dug our heels in and fought really hard.”

Peter Chambers said: “We are gutted. We were unlucky to get a silver with those conditions. We’re delighted with silver but we wanted to get gold.

‘Fair play to the South Africans, they won that fair and square.”

Their mum Gillian said she was delighted with the result and so proud of her sons.

“I hope they are not disappointed. At that level, that achievement is just too fantastic to consider it a disappointment - it was an unbelievably tough race,” she added.

“If they are disappointed, I will be disappointed with them. I think they will be very proud of what they have done.”