Liam Heath made it a super six of career European medals with silver in the K1 200m at the Canoe Sprint European Championships in Poznan, Poland.
The defending Olympic champion, who will aim to add to his three Games medals this summer in Tokyo, continued his preparations with an agonising second place which went to a photo finish.
Heath finished in a time of 35.407 seconds but was pipped by a mere two hundredths of a second by Hungary’s Sandor Totka.
Sweden’s Petter Menning completed the podium in third, just a tenth of a second behind Totka.
“Obviously we all go into our races with the aim to win but it’s really exciting when it’s that tight,” Heath said.
“You know you’re going fast when you’re in the mix in such a quality field. I knew it was a close finish and we had a wait at the end to see what the final results were and I just got pipped on the line by Sandor.
“It’s always good to race in high quality fields, the best in Europe, to go through the routine and fine tuning the things we’ve been working on in training.
“Every good performance at this level provides another layer of experience to learn from and it helps to build confidence.
“Everyone has very different training strategies so it’s amazing we can all finish within such a small margin, but that’s what makes it really exciting. It keeps the pressure on, keeps the drive to push harder in training and more motivation to push myself to the limits.
“The standard of racing hasn’t diminished across the world this year so it’s back to the next hard block of training and full steam ahead to Tokyo now."
Silver made it two medals in three weeks for Heath, adding to the World Cup gold he won in Szeged, Hungary.
Having only returned to action for the first time since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in April, the event represented another successful outing for Heath with the Games now just 47 days away.
Sportsbeat 2021
Photo Credit: British Canoeing