GB PRESS RELEASE: Great Britain concluded the European Championships in Liptovsky, Slovakia with a total medal tally of four after the women’s K1 trio won gold in today’s team event.
 
Britain’s Fiona Pennie, Lizzie Neave and Kimberley Woods had all found the course challenging in this morning’s individual K1W semi finals.
 
But assembling for this afternoon’s team event they produced a well synchronised effort to beat Germany into second place.
 
Whilst there were no individual medals today for the GB team, Olympic Champion Etienne Stott and Mark Proctor were consistent with a third place in C2M semi final and an eighth place in the final.
 
“It’s very hard to do two consistent runs on this course but we were pleased to race aggressively and as hard as we could,” said Stott.
 
“We prepared very carefully and went out very hard but the course was just so complicated that you only had to make little mistakes to cost you a higher position.
 
“There were a few things we improved on from our semi final but we also made a couple of extra little mistakes in the final.”
 
Stott described the setting of the gates on today’s course as “frenetic.”  There were certainly no simple moves which provided a stern test for all competitors.
 
“This race was the main focus of the season for the non Olympic boats, and our peak of the year, so we put everything we could into it,” continued Stott.
 
“It was our only chance to race at full capacity with full preparation after all our training camps.”
 
Britain’s Olympic team C2M boat, David Florence and Richard Hounslow, unusually did not qualify for today’s final after finishing seventeenth in the semi finals.
 
And the three British athletes competing in the women’s K1 event all missed the top 10 cut for their final.
 
The trio all faced challenges on different gate sequences, with Kimberly Woods needing to paddle back for gate 9 and Fiona Pennie having to do likewise on 17.  Whilst Lizzie Neave lost time on a couple of key sections.
 
None of them were helped by yesterday’s heavy rain, which reduced the temperature of the course.
 
“The course was really hard and technical and, being quite mountainous, the cold water, which had washed down from the hills, made it cold on the arms for racing and physically difficult,” explained Neave who did the best of the three with a sixteenth place.  Pennie came eighteenth whilst Woods was twenty sixth.
 
But racing in this afternoon’s K1W team event, the Brits were nearly flawless and beat Germany into second place by over four seconds.
 
“The team event was a nice consolation prize after not doing as well as we’d have liked to in the individual event,” said Neave.
 
“That’s the second time I have been European Champion in the team event and, though it doesn’t mean anything in terms of an Olympic event, it is always tricky to do with three boats going down the course at the same time.
 
“We all had a really good run and it’s always nice to come away with a medal in it.”