Kirsty Gilmour's hopes of a European Championships gold medal were dashed in Kolding on Sunday afternoon when she lost in the final for the second year running to Olympic and double World champion Carolina Marin, who made it a hat-trick of European titles with a 21-14, 21-12 victory in 43 minutes.
The Scot won the first four points of the opening game and steadily built up a lead, but in the second, Marin took a 3-0 lead before Gilmour caught up at 4-4. But the left-hander edged away again and built a five-point advantage to lead 11-6 at the mid-game interval.
Gilmour made a good fist of matching Marin and there were some high-quality rallies, even though most of them went Marin's way despite taking a nasty tumble as Gilmour made it 13-8.
But Marin survived the scare to move to 16-8 before a trademark Gilmour dive produced a winner followed by a cross-court winner to make it 16-10.
Gilmour may be disappointed at not winning gold against a player who has only lost to her once in seven meetings but after her long lay-off following knee surgery she can be well satisfied with the progress she has made since returning to action at the Yonex Scottish Nationals in Perth in February.
Now she can look forward to spearheading Scotland's team challenge at next month's Sudirman Cup before focusing on the TOTAL BWF World Championships 2017 in her home city of Glasgow in August.
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