RIO OLYMPICS: Twickenham's John Collins admits he had to dig deep to reach Olympic final

Dynamic dui: Twickenham's John Collins and men's double sculls crew mate Jonathan Walton are out to medal in Rio
Dynamic dui: Twickenham's John Collins and men's double sculls crew mate Jonathan Walton are out to medal in Rio
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Twickenham's John Collins and Team GB men's doubles sculls crew mate Jonathan Walton are not just in the Olympic final to make up the numbers - they are there to claim a medal.

The pair secured their place in Thursday's final after finishing third in Tuesday's semi-final in six minutes 13.83 seconds.

Collins, 27, admitted they had to dig deep to make the cut, but Walton, 25, insisted that now they were there it was time to take their chance. 

 “I’ve got goosebumps just saying we’re in the Olympic final. We have been working hard, we both believed we could do it," he said.

“It has not been easy to get out here and to finally say Olympic finalists is great, but we don’t just want to be Olympic finalists.

"We have set ourselves a good platform in that semi-final but we can still do more so bring that final on."

Leanders Club's Collins added: “We said we might have to do something we haven’t done before, we might have to put ourselves in a place that we haven’t practiced and do something that might make us vulnerable later in the race.

“That gave us a sense of freedom we haven’t had before and it paid off. We went through our processes and that ended up being good enough.”

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