HILPERTON Olympian Francesca Fox is counting her blessings, despite the freak accident that left her with ankle ligament damage at London 2012.

The 20-year-old and her rhythmic gymnastics teammates made history last week as they became the first team to ever represent Great Britain at the Olympics.

But days after competing at Wembley Arena, former Matravers School pupil Fox suffered an unfortunate fall while posing for a picture at the Olympic Park.

The Team GB star was on crutches for Sunday’s closing ceremony and is breathing a huge sigh of relief over the timing of her freak injury.

“We all got to go the park for the first time after we’d competed and we all decided to pose for a picture in this big mirror,” Fox told the Wiltshire Times.

“I was wearing flip-flops and managed to fall over.

“There’s one picture of everyone smiling and in the next, the other girls are all starting to laugh.

“But I could tell that I’d actually hurt myself and it turned out I’ve got severely damaged ankle ligaments.

“My coach (Sarah Moon) said that she’d have killed me if it had happened before the event and I’d not been able to compete.

“At the big party in the athletes village after the closing ceremony, people like (gymnast) Louis Smith and (boxer) Anthony Ogogo were coming to talk to me about it and the water polo team were just laughing at me.”

The Team GB girls wowed the home crowd at Wembley Arena last Friday as they narrowly finished 12th in the team event.

A delighted Fox added: “People doubted whether we should be there or not but we proved that we deserved to be there – what we did was amazing.”