Flora Duffy claims historic first Gold for Bermuda

On Jul 27, 2021

With a population of just 63,000, Bermuda became the smallest nation or territory to win an Olympic Gold Medal at a summer Games when Flora Duffy won the triathlon in Tokyo, Japan yesterday.

The 33-year-old, making her fourth appearance at an Olympics, came out on top of the 56-Woman field with a time of one hour 55 minutes 36 seconds – more than a minute ahead of Great Britain’s Georgia Taylor-Brown and USA’s Katie Zaferes.

Bermuda already held the record for being the least populated country to win a summer Olympic medal thanks to a Bronze for boxer Clarence Hill in 1976 but now they have their first Gold Medal winner.

Duffy, who rejected the chance to represent Britain as a teenager, is already familiar with writing her name into the history books having become Bermuda’s first female Commonwealth Games champion in 2018.

To put into context the size of Duffy’s win, at 51 kilometres the triathlon event itself is longer than an end-to-end walk across the length of Bermuda (40km).