Traditionally a minnow in the sport, Britain failed to win an Olympic gymnastics medal of any colour between 1928 until 2008, when Louis Smith won a bronze medal on the pommel horse.

Since then the country enjoyed a remarkable raise, winning four Olympic medals at London 2012, before England and Scottish athletes dominated the recent Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

The latest victory showcases their ever-expanding conveyor belt of talent, with Regini-Moran's victory following gold and silver for London 2012 team bronze medallist Sam Oldham four years ago at the inaugural Youth Olympics in Singapore.

The 16-year-old Europa Gymnastics Club athlete dominated the competition this time around to win with 84.725 points, leaving him comfortably clear of silver and bronze medal winners, Nikiya Nagornyy of Russia and Alec Yoder of the United States.

Britain celebrate their 4x100m freestyle relay swimming success ©Getty Images



There was more success for Team GB, meanwhile, in swimming, when the British quartet powered to the gold medal in the boy's 4x100 metres freestyle relay title in a time of 3min 21.19sec, to knock Italy and Germany into the silver and bronze medals in an all-European podium.

China were disqualified in the preliminary stages due to an illegal changeover but still had plenty to celebrate, with victories for Shen Duo in the girl's 100m freestyle and for Zhuhao Li in the boy's 100m butterfly.

There was an 800m freestyle victory for Italy's Simona Duadarella while entertainment for the neutral was provided in the 200m backstroke when Italy's Ambra Esposito tied for the gold medal with the United States Hannah Moore in thrilling fashion.

It was a good night for Croatia in martial arts as Brigita Matic beat Bosnia and Herzegovina's Aleksandra Samardzic to win the women's under 78 kilogram judo final, before Ivana Bavik won the under 55kg category in taekwondo.

Edival Marques Quirino Pontes of Brazil won the final gold medal of the evening in the under 63kg taekwondo, while Ramin Safaviyeh of Iran dominated the boy's under 100kg judo event.

In fencing, Alina Moseyko of Russia emerged victorious in the girl's sabre competition and the boy's foil event was won by Andrzej Rzadowski of Poland.

Next door, in the weightlifting, Nien-Hsin Chiang of Taiwan and Bozhidar Dimitrov Andreev of Bulgaria claimed the honours in the respective girl's under 58kg and boy's under 69kg competitions.

Alina Moseyko of Russia (left) took sabre fencing gold ©Getty Images



Earlier on, the first gold medal of the day, and the first of the Games here for Switzerland, had been won by 10m air rifle shooter, Sarah Hornung. 

Other than that, the big talking point was the return of an Olympic golf competition for the first time since St Louis 1904, with a remarkable 164-yard hole-in-one by Canada's Tony Gil the clear highlight of the opening day of strokeplay action.

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