By Rewriting History Max Whitlock Has Claimed Team GB's Best Rio 2016 Medal Yet

It took until Day 5 at the 2012 London Games for Team GB to really lift off, and so it has proved at the 2016 Rio Games. Wednesday was an incredible day for British athletes, with two gold medals won along with a further four bronze medals to record their most successful day at the Games to date.

The pick of the bunch had to be Max Whitlock's bronze in the gymnastics men's all-around. Gold it may not have been, but in one afternoon of competition, Whitlock wiped clean 108 years of history by becoming the first British man since 1908 to take a medal in the event.

That's over a century of upsets gone, more than a hundred years of failure forgotten. The slate has been wiped clean, and Team GB are getting themselves on a roll in Brazil.

Special mention has to go to diving pair Jack Laugher and Chris Mears, who became the first Brits to ever take a diving Olympic title. And Joe Clarke triumphed in the kayak K1 to take a surprise gold medal after a mesmerising performance as he slalomed his way down the course.

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Laugher and Mears created history on Wednesday—an achievement in itself—but by rewriting it, Whitlock has edged them out to receive the most applause. It may only be by the finest of margins, but his bronze represents so much for the gains Britain is making in a sport where British athletes have been the underdog for too long.

Dominated by China, countries from Eastern Europe and Japan's Kohei Uchimura, gymnastics has almost been a forgotten sport for Britons. The expectation has been of Team GB turning up simply to make up the numbers.

The emergence of Beth Tweddle helped turn the tide, as did Louis Smith claiming silver on the pommel at the London Games. Incidentally, Whitlock took bronze in the same event in London.

At World Championships, British gymnasts have started to gain recognition, and now Whitlock has put that onto another level.

The 23-year-old's success this time out has blown everything of out the water. The colour of Whitlock's medal isn't the important thing; it's the fact he has one around his neck that counts for so much. Britain doesn't produce all-around gymnasts—that's been the rule of thumb. Not anymore it isn't.

Rewriting history and creating it are two different things. They represent equally significant moments in the sporting landscape, but coming up against such a burden as a century of narrative can prove a significant pressure for any sportsman.

We see it across the board. For the England football team, it's the history and painful memories of penalty shootouts that so haunts them; at Wimbledon it used to be coming so close to emulating Fred Perry only for British players to fall at the semi-finals just as a nation started to believe in them.

Like Andy Murray did at The Championships in 2013, Whitlock has made minced meat of it all.

History creates expectation, and the more a team or country fails to repeat what the record books tell us they have in the past, so the anticipation and pressure grows. When something has never been achieved before, that hope isn't always there.

It was accepted that Team GB weren't supposed to be Olympic champions in diving. Sure, the talent pool is growing—excuse the pun—but as a developing sport, the disappointments aren't the same. The reaction for coming close in diving or other emerging sports is treated with more of a sense of it being inevitable.

Because there is no year to associate with success, no benchmark, the pressure is a different kind. Now divers will have to overcome the standard that Laugher and Mears have set; now is the time when the pressure starts to grow. The pair have opened the Pandora's box that has enveloped British gymnastics since 1908.

When a country was once challenging at the top, the perspectives are different. For Whitlock, there was always going to be a positive will for him to succeed, yet as a sportsman, he would have been feeling the shadow of Walter Tysall looming large over him, just as any Briton had before. He had to step out of that and make a name for himself.

"My coach and I have been working so hard over the past four years," Whitlock would tell BBC Sport as the success sunk in. "We stepped out of London 2012, and I wanted to prove myself as an all-rounder, and I've done that. I feel I've completed that target now."

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He's done so much more than hit a target; Whitlock has put British gymnastics back on the map.

Team GB and the threat the men and women carry was already well-known among gymnastics fans. Now more are going to be drawn to the sport. Britain are back winning medals, and that inspires the imagination. When those medals are coming after a century and more of endeavour, it feeds it all the more.

Yes, it wasn't a gold that Whitlock snagged, but he's broken the duck. He's changed the conversation.

What an incredible day it was for British athletes; what a historic one it was for gymnastics and diving.