HANNAH Brown came within a whisker of making the A final at the opening Canoe Sprint World Cup event of the season last weekend.

The 25-year-old paddler, from Bradford on Avon, was part of the Great Britain development team that travelled out to Montemoro-o-Velho in Portugal for the first World Cup of the year and Brown excelled in her favoured K1 200m discipline, finishing seventh in Sunday’s B final.

Wiltshire ace Brown, who stormed to a K1 sprint gold medal at the 2013 World Wildwater Championships, finished fourth in her heat with a time of 41.068 seconds before clinching a fifth-placed finish in the semi-finals (43.652).

Unfortunately, that time was not quite enough to earn Brown a place in the hunt for the podium in the A final in Portgual and she instead found herself lining up in the B final, where she crossed the line in 40.768, just over a second behind Kazahkstani winner Inna Klinova.

Brown is a pencilled in as a reserve for the third World Cup in Copenhagen, Denmark, on May 29-31.

Meanwhile, her Bradford on Avon canoe club team-mate Ed McKeever is due in action in the heats of the men’s K1 200m at World Cup two in Duisberg, Germany, this afternoon.

The London 2012 gold medallist, who will also be paddling in Copenhagen at the end of the month, goes in the first heat in Duisberg at 4.10pm UK time.