ROWAN Elliott is celebrating achieving two silver medals on the world stage.

He was fractions away from one of them being gold, while the other was unexpected.

The two gongs came in the World Masters Track Championships at Manchester Velodrome.

It was his first shot at the over 35s event.

“I am extremely happy with my two silver medals and my performance in all events and now know what I need to work on for next year’s racing,” said Elliott, a personal trainer working from Elite Health in Knutsford.

“I really couldn’t have been happier with the results even if I was a little gutted to come second by such a small margin.”

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His first silver arrived in the ‘kilometre’ event with a time of 1.05.695.

“I went up with four heats yet to go and performed a personal best time,” he said.

“I wasn’t really expecting anything from this event so was very surprised when I qualified fastest, until the time was beaten by Bradley Norton from Australia.”

Next up was the sprint championships.

“I qualified third fastest with a 10.850 flying 200m time, which is 0.050 off a personal best.

“But bad decisions in round one meant I got beaten by the eventual third place and bronze medal winner.”

It was in the team sprint that Elliott returned to the podium.

“On the last day of my championships it was the team sprint with teammates Luca Lupo and Josh Spendlow,” he explained.

“We qualified second fastest in the morning with a 48.058.

“We knew we had some work to do as the French and defending champions qualified with a 47.685.

“The race was a close as could be and we finished with a 47.489 and improving our time by a whole 0.6 seconds but the French improved by two tenths and marginally beat us by 0.043 seconds.”

Elliott has been racing on the track for the past 10 years.

He has enjoyed success both in the National Grass Track 400m and 800m, and also in the National Masters in 2017 and 2018 in which he won both the ‘kilometre’ and sprint.

“This year I came fourth in the kilo with a 1.07.242 and third in the sprint with a qualification time of 11.020,” he said.