BRADLEY FORBES-CRYANS remains on course to show he deserves to be at these Olympic Games.
The Edinburgh canoeist has been undermined ever since achieving qualification back in October 2019 after he pipped defending champion Joe Clarke to the one available place in the K1 slalom event. Even Clarke himself has hardly been a gracious loser over the subsequent 21 months.
It seems only by winning a medal will Forbes-Cryans finally silence the critics and he improved his chances of doing so by reaching the semi-finals yesterday.
He got off to a great start with a penalty-free opening run of 93.65 at the Kasai Canoe Slalom Centre in Tokyo that left him in fifth place at that stage.
He couldn’t improve on that time in his second run – posting a time of 101.46 after two penalties and a small paddle back – but his opening effort was enough to see him through to tomorrow’s semis in 13th place overall, well inside the top 20 cut-off point.
“I’m really happy with that,” said the 26 year-old. “It felt fantastic to sit on that Olympic start line for the first run.
“I went out there on the second run trying to deliver little bits of my plan that could’ve been better from my first run.
“Unfortunately it didn’t happen the way I wanted but today has been fantastic and so memorable to me. I’m really looking forward to the semi-final.
“The last 12 months I’ve probably been the most stress-free I’ve ever felt leading into an event. I knew I had a clear job, how I wanted to go about my business in training. I’ve done that. Now I’m here, I’m looking to see how that’s going to pay off for me.
“The Tokyo 2020 course uses a similar system to Lee Valley so it is a little familiar. I think everyone will need to be on their A game for the semi-finals. It’s often extremely competitive. I’ll execute my plan to the best of my ability and that’s all I can do.”
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