Hampton Hill’s Jess Walker may not have been part of Team GB’s Olympic gold rush, but the Royal Canoe Club sprint kayaker was proud of her efforts in Rio.

The 25-year-old and crewmates Rachel Cawthorn, Rebekah Simon and Louisa Gurski clocked one minute 37.04 to finish seventh in the K4 500m Olympic final on Saturday.

But despite missing a medal Walker was not too downhearted.

“Everyone has had their own journey and if you look at our journey, you’ll see we’ve done really well,” she said.

“Rachel has been ill for a really big chunk of this winter so she’s done amazingly.

“We’re not happy with what we’ve done on the day, but we’re really proud of the journey and I think that’s more important than anything.

“We can definitely push forward again. If you saw what we did last year after just five weeks together, we had every reason to believe we could medal.

“There was absolutely no reason not to believe we could win a medal, but it just didn’t happen.”