HALESOWEN Cycling Club’s Helen Scott had to settle for Paralympic silver in the one kilometre tandem time trial.

Scott and team-mate Aileen McGlynn set a new personal best of in the event for blind/visually impaired athletes at the Velodrome this morning.

But they were edged out by the Australian duo of Felicity Johnson and Stephanie Morton, who set a new Paralympic record in the process.

New Zealand’s Phillipa Gray and Laura Thompson took bronze.

The final result was identical to February’s World Championships when Johnson and Morton got the better of the Scott, who is the able-bodied pilot for McGlynn, by almost three seconds.

Since then the British pair have focused plenty of effort into this discipline and though today’s performance showed they have closed the gap considerably, it wasn’t quite enough to take the crown.

The penultimate pair to start, Scott and McGlynn got out of the gate superbly and at the halfway stage looked set to challenge the world record.

But they couldn’t sustain the pace despite breaking their personal best, eventually just dipping under the Paralympic record held by 39-year-old McGlynn to set a time of one minute 09.469 seconds.

Just Johnson and Morton were left to go and they produced a nerveless display to snatch gold and break the record with a time of one minute 08.919 seconds.

McGlynn is a two-time champion in this event and there was a definite air of disappointment from the British team at the end but Scott believes they will continue to improve.

She said: “Hopefully we will continue picking up, we have had the most amazing year here together and we broke her personal best on the biggest stage.

“We will keep working and hopefully one day get that gold.”

Scott and McGlynn next compete on Sunday in the 3km Pursuit.