QUEEN Elizabeth’s School student Freddie Heard has won a string of kayaking medals.

A member of Exeter Canoe Club, he backed up fifth place at the recent Junior European Championships at the National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham.

Racing in the under 16s category, he took gold in the 1,000-metre and 500-metre events and was narrowly beaten into second place in the 200-metre.

He also raced up in the under 18s double kayak and four-man kayak (K4) to take gold in both events.

Racing with Oli Mazur from Reading in the double, they finished with clear water to the next boat.

And the K4 time (Heard/Mazur/Dickson/Hatton) was fractions of a second off the Nottingham course record, and marginally quicker than Freddie’s Europeans performance, which incidentally was half of a second from bronze.

Freddie’s results also proved inspirational for three girls from Exeter. Exeter’s Amaya Raynor, teamed up with Greta Nagy from Reading to take bronze in the 1000-metre narrowly ahead of all Exeter crew of Evelyn Walker and Leia Smith in fourth.

Day two of the regatta saw Smith and Walker back up their 500-metre result, narrowly missing out on a podium in the 500-metre doubles, finishing strongly in 4th place with a personal best.

Coach Colin Heard said: “In only their second regatta their improvement over the last six weeks has been amazing.

“They’ve really worked hard. The results speak for themselves.”

The Team GB crew of Heard (Exeter)/ Mazur/ Hatton/ Dickinson made the final by the finest of margins, but they took their opportunity to race out of their skins in the final.

As eighth-fastest qualifiers they had an outside lane. But a storming second half of the race saw them overhaul the Germans, the Polish, Serbs and Ukrainians to finish fifth, just half a second from the third-place Czechia crew.