Paris 2024 taekwondo: Jade Jones' local pub hosting Olympic party in honour of history-chasing champion
'The Mill Tavern is the go-to place to watch live sport in Flint,' states the promotional blurb for the small-town pub in north Wales.
"So whether you’re wanting to watch the Champions League, Premier League, Rugby, NBA, Boxing, NFL, Cricket, Darts, F1 or Horse Racing; you can experience them all on our giant HD screens. When the sport gets big, we've got the atmosphere to match."
The sport they are missing is taekwondo and on Thursday 8 August the pub will host the biggest sport event of the year for the town with a population of 12,000.
That's because one of their own, Jade Jones, is attempting to win a third Olympic gold medal, in the -57kg classification, at Paris 2024. Jones claimed top spot as a teenager at her home Games at London 2012 and repeated the feat at Rio 2016.
Then came Tokyo 2020, and Jones would return home from Japan needing all the support her local community could muster.
Jade Jones's reset for Olympic history
Attempting a history-making third gold medal – consecutive at that – Jones lost in the first round to then Refugee Olympic Team competitor Kimia Alizadeh.
Shellshocked, Jones was out and heading home.
Reflecting on the result to Olympics.com at the 2023 European Games in Poland after winning featherweight gold, Jones was as brutal about her performance as the kick that gives her the moniker, the headhunter.
"To be fair, like I said, [I] maybe took it for granted a bit, the winning and, just, I wasn't hungry to win. I was more scared to lose it as if it was mine to lose. Whereas, just the losing it, it makes me appreciate how hard the other ones were to win."
Now Jones has gone all in again for what she has stated is her last Olympic hoorah, and her dad wanted to make a celebration of it.
Taking a week off work, he approached the local pub to organise a family-friendly event to watch the live sport unfold.
With up to four fights in the offing, including potentially coming up against Alizadeh again, who now represents Bulgaria, it will be a nervy day for the town in which every pub is hosting some sort of event.
But front and centre will be Jones' proud family, including her grandfather, who introduced a troublesome Jones to the sport aged eight. By 16, Jones had left school to practice the sport full-time. Three years later she was Olympic champion.
“Honestly, she has made her grandad, her nana and the rest of us so proud…" dad Gary said. "Sometimes I’m just driving along, and I start thinking ‘how has she got two gold medals?’"
“The community of Flint always come together to celebrate their own, and the excitement is growing," said pub manager, Kelly Williams. "Everybody in the town knows Jade and we’re all supporting her as she fights for her third Olympic gold medal."
"I hope we blow the roof off the Mill Tavern if she wins," said her proud dad.
That may well be something Williams didn't take into consideration when agreeing to host, but something tells us she wouldn't mind.