Great Britain’s Liam Heath broke new ground at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup at Racice on Sunday after picking up a silver medal in his first-ever senior K1 200 final.
Heath returned to the water just 20 minutes later alongside K2 partner Jon Schofield without knowing the result after an incredibly close finish to the race.
The pair were beaten out of a K2 200 podium place after finishing fourth but in the meantime Heath’s silver medal was confirmed, coming in just 0.033 of a second behind Canada’s Mark De Jonge.
“It was really nice to get out and show my face in K1 and I’m quite pleased with the effort I put in did today,” said Heath.
“You go through the heats and the semis and you get an idea of how you are racking up against the other competitors.
“So you go into the race knowing that you are a potential. But it's so close, the times are separated by hundredths of a second and you are never 100 percent sure what's going to happen.
“I hadn’t got a clue where I’d come in either race until I'd gone off the water from the K2 and started to get changed and the boys told me my results.”
Elsewhere women’s pair Rachel Cawthorn and Lani Belcher, who won bronze in this weekend’s K1 100 final, scooped up a fine silver in the K2 200.
“It was really exciting to win silver,” said Belcher. “We jumped in the K2 together a couple of months ago and it felt pretty awesome from the start.
“We haven't done masses of training together but it just seemed to click because we both paddle quite similarly.
“We knew we had a good chance of a medal today if we stuck to our race plan. In the 200 it's always so close you just have to commit to it and see what happens on the finish line.”
© Sportsbeat 2014