THERE was no European glory for Crossgates paddler Rachel Syme after she missed out on a European canoe medal recently.

The talented former Beath High School pupil, who is a member of Kirkcaldy Canoe Club, travelled to the Serbian capital Belgrade to take part in the European Canoe Association (ECA) Canoe Sprint Juniors and Under-23 European Championship.

Rachel, 20, was selected by Great Britain for the competition – which took place from June 22-25 – following a series of crew boat trials and training camps at the National Watersports Centre in Nottingham.

Following the conclusion of the MacGregor Inter-Club Challenge and National and Open Under-23 Championship over the weekend of June 3-4, she took home the women's under-23 K4 500 metres event title alongside Tanisha Clayton (Holme Pierrepont), Lucy-Lee Smith (Norwich) and Emma Ricketts (Anker Valley).

That saw the quartet selected for the K4 500M competition, which comprises of a four-person crew in a kayak, at the European Championship, where they raced in the under-23 women's event.

But the GB crew found it tough going against the other seven boats in the final, and were 4.81 seconds adrift of early pacesetters Hungary over the first 250m.

They were unable to make any inroads into the advantage of their opponents as they finished in eighth place, 9.568 seconds behind race winners Poland, who overhauled Hungary, while Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Belarus and the Czech Republic took the remaining spots ahead of GB.