David Florence qualified at the second attempt for tomorrow's C1 semi-finals at the World Canoe Slalom Championships in Pau, France yesterday, but the triple world champion found himself upstaged by fellow Scot Fiona Pennie.
The Crieff canoeist posted the fastest qualifying time in yesterday morning's K1 kayak heats after negotiating the Pyrenean course in 86.41seconds, putting her 0.35sec quicker than Germany's Ricarda Funk.
"It wasn't a perfect run and hopefully there's more to come in the semi and final," said the 2013 European champion. "The first part was pretty good, but I came a little bit unstuck near the bottom of the course and had to pull hard to get back on line. I didn't want to do anything too drastic or cut things too tight in qualifying. I haven't seen the course yet for the semi-final, but maybe I'll have to choose a faster option on some gates. Putting three good runs together is hopefully do-able."
Florence claimed his tenth world medal – a silver in the C1 team final – on Tuesday, but a two-second time penalty on yesterday's first run saw him miss out on automatic qualification by just 0.15sec. The defending champion regrouped and went through comfortably on his second attempt after avoiding any errors and clocking the second-best time, 84.72. "You just want to get through to the semis, but I was really pleased with my second run," said Florence.
Scot Eilidh Gibson competes in today's C1 semi-finals as she bids to emulate her team gold from Tuesday, while Bradley Forbes-Cryans goes in the K1 semis.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here