Jack Burrows might have not won a medal like Kathryn Thomson on day two of the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival but he was satisfied with a personal best all the same.
Burrows, who won mixed relay gold at the inaugural Winter Youth Olympics last year, opened his campaign in Romania by reaching the 1500m semi-finals on Sunday.
He was back out on the ice 24 hours later for the 500m and, despite failing to make it out of the heats, he clocked a personal best time of 44.892seconds to narrowly miss out.
The winner of that heat, Russian Denis Ayrapetyan, went on to claim gold while Burrows returned with British teammates Thomson, Aydin Djemal and Mari Deland for the mixed relay semi-finals.
They were penalised and knocked out and, while Thomson won silver in the women’s 500m race, Burrows was pleased with his own personal effort even if it didn’t produce a medal.
“My draw was very hard, the Russian guy actually went on to win gold in the final but my skate was good and I did everything right,” said Burrows, who still has the 1000m to come.
“Essentially I left myself a little bit too much to do to try and break into the top two and qualify which is a shame because that was a personal best time for me.
“We got off to a great start in the relay but it got a bit ragged at the end when we were overtaken for second. Trying to win the place back in the end meant we got a penalty so it wasn’t a great result.”
© Sportsbeat 2013