Liam Heath admits there is still work to be done in his bid for Rio despite culminating his Canoe Sprint World Cup campaign with a bronze medal. Heath, who picked up the same colour alongside Jon Schofield in the K2 200m at London 2012, finished joint third in a world-class line-up that saw only 0.23 seconds separate the top four paddlers in Duisburg. The 31-year-old finished in 34.582 seconds to end level with Latvia’s Aleksejs Rumjancevs, falling just short of the time needed to knock eventual winner Manfredi Rizza of Italy and French runner-up Maxime Beaumont off the top two perches on the podium. And while the three-time European champion insists he was pleased to be among the medals, Heath admits he had expected more after a convincing performance in the semi-final. “It wasn’t quite the race I was hoping for, but it is definitely something to improve on over the next few months,” he said. “I had a really good semi-final yesterday where I executed the perfect race plan, but today was a bit different. “I had a great 150m, but then I basically coasted down the last 100m as my arms blew out and just stopped working. “I tried to maintain as much speed as I could down to the line and initially I thought I had come fourth but then found I had tied for third.” Heath has enjoyed a phenomenal few weeks on the water, winning the British Olympic trials ahead of London 2012 champion Ed McKeever to place him in great contention for a seat on the plane to Rio. But while this weekend’s World Cup action has seen many positive performances from the Olympic boats, Heath still insists that improvements can still be made in time for August. “The whole weekend has highlighted areas for us to work on in both K2 and K1 and it is the same sort of area in both,” he said. “At this stage of our training we haven’t been doing too much work on the back end of our races, so after Racice next week we will start moving towards and maintain the top end of our race speed and hopefully do better than the results we have done this weekend.” Sportsbeat 2016