Copacabana beach has turned out to be happy hunting ground for Dutch swimmers at Rio 2016. On Tuesday (16 August), Ferry Weertman won the men's 10km open water event, just 24 hours after team-mate Sharon van Rouwendaal's victory in the women's race along the same course.

Rio-time updates: follow the action with our daily liveblog

Unlike van Rouwendaal, who had won by a handsome margin, Weertman only managed to land victory at the last gasp after a dramatic battle to the finish with 10 of his rivals, stretching up to touch the finishing board just fractionally ahead of Greece's Spiros Gianniotis.

"Even after I touched the wall, I wasn't sure I'd wo," he said. "It took me a while. I called my friends back home and they said 'You won, you won!' and I'm like, 'Oh really?' I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it."

The pair were so close that they were given the same finishing time of 1hr 52min 59.8sec but the 24-year-old European champion Weertman, who won silver at last year's world championships, just did enough to earn the gold ahead of the former double world champion, the 36-year-old veteran Gianniotis.

The first finishers were all given the same time in a dramatic end to a 10km race (Photo: Getty Images/Quinn Rooney)

A couple of seconds behind in a chaotic rush for the finish, there was an equally tight call for the bronze medal with Frenchman Marc-Antoine Olivier just beating China's Zu Lijun to the touch, with both men being timed at 1hr 53min 02.0 sec.

Race favourite Jordan Wilimovksy of the USA, the world champion, came home fifth, a further 1.2sec behind and, in all, just five seconds covered the first 11 swimmers home.

The race will also be remembered for the heroic effort of Australia's Jarrod Poort, who made a noble solo bid to take the title and led for one hour and 39 minutes until he was finally overhauled by the rest of the field.

Poort had shot away from the field from the very start, opening up a 58-second lead on his 24 rivals after the first of the four 2.5km laps, showing a relentless rhythm as his opponents jostled for position and he increased his advantage to over a minute and a quarter by half-way.

For a while, it seemed the 21-year-old's daring might pay off but, almost inevitably, he began to tire on the third lap as the chase group rallied and, going into the last circuit, his lead had been cut to 40 seconds over the pack, led by reigning champion Oussama Mellouli of Tunisia. who eventually got swallowed up in the rush for home and could only finish 12th.

Tiring and meandering, Poort did not take the best line, enabling his pursuers to finally end his solo bid, Weertman initially forging clear initially before six swimmers battled in a row towards the finishing board, with Weertman winning out at the last stroke.

Olympic Games tickets are available to buy on the Rio 2016 portal