Mallory Franklin laid down a marker ahead of the Canoe Slalom World Championships later this month by securing her sixth World Cup medal of the season in La Seu d’Urgell.
Franklin and the Great Britain squad fly to Rio next weekend and she will travel with a spring in her step following a double-medal showing at the final World Cup event of the year.
Franklin won bronze in the women’s kayak (K1) on Saturday and backed that up with a superb performance in the canoe single (C1) on Sunday – where she took silver, just 1.04s off Australia’s Jessica Fox.
The result confirmed second place overall in the World Cup standings and the 24-year-old is gunning for more in Rio.
“I feel really good on the water, extremely powerful and I am really looking forward to getting out to Rio and training on the course and hopefully come away with some more good results,” she said.
Franklin is regarded as one of the most powerful athletes in the field and she displayed all her strength again during her final run.
She manoeuvred the canoe superbly during the first half, drifting between the gates with ease until she brushed 20.
That cost her time and a shot at the title but it did not take away from a polished performance.
“I really enjoyed it and I like the very technical courses like this. To have done a run of that quality was really, really good,” she added.
“It was almost perfect but then I just had one mistake on the bottom where I got a jump at the back of gate 19 and I picked up the touch on 20, but to come away with silver is really good.”
Elsewhere, there was disappointment for Olympic champion Joe Clarke in the men’s single kayak (K1) as he failed to make the final.
The Stoke athlete was 0.23s up after his first split but he touched gate 20 and eventually finished 11th in the semi-finals.
Sportsbeat 2018