Alice Kinsella and GB fall agonisingly short of gymnastics bronze

Then the mathematical reality dawned, smiles turned to frowns, hands went from punching the air to being held on heads.

Tears were shed. Whether in joy or sorrow, it was hard to tell.

At the same time, in the middle of the Bercy Arena, Simone Biles brought home the win for the USA to roars from the crowd, most of whom had come to see one of the greatest athletes of all time claim a fifth Olympic gold.

Serena Williams, Michael Phelps and Bill Gates were among the 13,000 present. All press box seats were taken more than an hour before the start.

Pretty much everyone and everything else in this corner of Paris was playing second fiddle to Biles, back in the competition from which she withdrew in Tokyo three years ago when struggling with her mental health.

But while the 27-year-old and her team-mates were mesmerising, their triumph was also expected.

GB being in the medal hunt was not. The quintet which featured three Olympic debutants and two teenagers, were given no chance of repeating the feat of three years ago when they came from nowhere to claim the country’s first team medal in 93 years.

And yet they came so very close to doing so. Just 0.234 points were all that separated them from Brazil at the finish and it required a stunning vault from Rebeca Andrade, reigning Olympic champion on that apparatus, to put the South Americans over the line to claim the final place on the podium behind the Americans and Italy.

When Park Wrekin’s Kinsella, the only returning member from three years ago, completed GB’s evening with the final routine on beam, she and her team-mates thought they had done enough to take it themselves.

Ultimately, not quite. Kinsella’s score of 13.600, while good, left them just short.

“We did really think we had it, but I'm still so super proud of the girls,” said the 23-year-old.

She has every reason to be. This Olympics was always going to be a test of GB’s strength in depth with both Gadirova sisters, Jennifer and Jessica, missing through injury along with Ondine Achampong.

If Sunday’s performance was worrying, this was hugely encouraging.

Abigail Martin and Ruby Evans, 16 and 17 respectively, stepped up to the plate. At the other end of her career Becky Downie, competing in her third Games, produced a brilliant uneven bars routine to put GB up to third after three of the four rotations. For Downie, this was a particularly poignant occasion, the final falling on the birthday of her late brother.

Kinsella, whose qualifying performance was so below par she barely made the selection for Thursday’s individual all-around final, did what she has done so often before, responding to a disappointing display with a much stronger.

Her scores on all four pieces of apparatus were higher than in qualifying, in a couple of cases significantly so.

It all came down to the beam, the most unforgiving of pieces upon which she is a former European champion.

“For me, I was the most nervous I’ve ever been out there,” she said. “I thought I was gonna be sick. I kept my cool really well and I’m just so proud.

“Obviously fourth isn’t the nicest position to be in. I’ve been in it plenty of times. We did think we had it at the end of my beam routine. But we didn’t.”