Great Britain’s Liam Heath won a bronze medal in the men’s K1 200m at Sea Forest Waterway.
The 36-year-old defending Olympic champion clocked 35.202 seconds to finish third behind Hungary’s Sandor Totka, with Italian Manfredi Rizza taking silver.
Heath, who set an Olympic-best time of 33.985 seconds during Wednesday’s qualifying, took second in the opening semi-final to set up his medal assault.
And while he could not make it successive golds, it was Guildford-based Heath’s fourth Olympic medal following previous K2 sprint success at the Rio Games and London 2012.
It's Olympic bronze for @Liam_heath!
Photo finish on the line and Liam has his fourth Olympic medal.#TeamGB #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/hJrqYG0oHn
— Team GB (@TeamGB) August 5, 2021
Drawn in lane three, Heath delivered a consistent performance, but could not quite threaten the top two.
Totka and Rizza were separated by just 45-hundredths of a second, with Heath leading the charge behind them.
Elsewhere sixteen-year-old Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix and Lois Toulson both reached the final of the women’s 10 metres platform event.
Spendolini-Sirieix, daughter of TV presenter Fred Sirieix, finished eighth in the semi-final and 21-year-old Toulson ninth, with a top-12 place enough to qualify for the final later on Thursday.
Both will need to produce the performance of their lives to challenge for the medals, with gold and silver seemingly destined for Chinese duo Quan Hongchan and Chen Yuxi.
Andrew Pozzi came seventh in the men’s 110m hurdles final in 13.30 seconds.
Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment took gold in a shock ahead of favourite Grant Holloway of the USA with Ronald Levy third.
The men’s 4x100m relay reached Friday’s final after coming second in their heat.
CJ Ujah, Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, Richard Kilty and Zharnel Hughes finished in 38.02 seconds.
Morgan Lake also made the high jump final after clearing the automatic qualifying height of 1.95m.
