KAT DRISCOLL finished seventh in the final of the World Trampoline Championships as the British team created history by successfully claiming two qualifying spots for next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Driscoll, who is from West Rainton and a member of the Apollo Trampoline Club in Washington, was one of two British trampolinists who qualified for yesterday’s World final in Denmark.

By progressing from the semi-finals along with team-mate Bryony Page, Driscoll successfully ensured Britain will be able to send two competitors to next summer’s Olympic competition.

It will be the first time in history that two Britons have competed in the same Olympic event, and while Driscoll is not yet assured of a place in Brazil, her performances over the last week leave her in an extremely strong position.

She came seventh in yesterday’s final, with Page finishing two places ahead of her in fifth position. The gold medal went to China’s Li Dan, with another Chinese trampolinist, Liu Linging, claiming the silver medal and Belarussian Tatsiana Piatrenia winning bronze.

Driscoll, who also helped Britain finish fifth in the team final, had always insisted that Olympic qualification was the key objective at the World Championships, which were staged in Odense.

On that score, the event has proved a huge success, and the North-Easterner admits she was overcome with emotion when she realised she had helped secure two automatic spots at next year’s Games.

“It’s the most emotional I’ve ever been,” said Driscoll. “I finished my semi-final routine and pretty much started crying straight away just because of the relief of getting a routine done and it being pretty solid.

“Then Bryony went and she started crying, and that just set me off again. We figured out that we definitely had one spot, then we worked out again that we had two and were pretty much crying the whole time.”

Driscoll has spent most of the last year mixing her time between her Washington training base and British Gymnastics’ high-performance centre in Lilleshall, and is delighted that the long hours of practice have finally paid off.

“We’ve done so much training at Lilleshall, and we’ve been put under pressure there,” she said. “We couldn’t have done any more in training, and we’ve been really consistent and positive.

“We knew what we were capable of, so it wasn’t a flash in the pan thing. We’ve been training really hard for it, and proving week in, week out that we can do what we did out there.”