Team GB’s first gold medal of the Paris Olympics brought a special royal moment with it and it’s been 76 years in the making.
After their win the the team eventing, Laura Collett, Tom McEwen and Ros Canter stood on the podium to hear the national anthem played. And for the first time since 1948, that was God Save The King.
While the winners were singing for Charles III, it was his sister who did the honours with Princess Anne handing out the medals at Versailles where the equestrian events are being held.
Soon afterwards, God Save The King was heard again as Tom Pidcock took gold in the men’s mountain bike cross country.
The last summer games, held in Tokyo in 2021, came in the final years of the reign of Elizabeth II and so Team GB’s 22 gold medals were all followed by God Save The Queen.
The winter games of 2022 were held in Beijing in February, just months before the death of Elizabeth II.
So these summer games are the first Olympics of a new reign. And while the tune remains the same, the words to the national anthem have changed as the era of Elizabeth II has become the new age of Charles III.
The last time God Save The King was sung at an Olympics was in 1948 during the reign of Charles III’s grandfather, George VI. Britain won three gold medals at those games.
The 1948 Olympics finished on August 14th 1948 and exactly three months later, George VI became a grandfather for the first time when his elder daughter, Elizabeth, welcomed a son – now Charles III.
And 76 years on from the summer games of George VI, it’s Charles III whose being hailed as Team GB strike gold and the band strikes up ‘God Save The King’.
