Stonehaven's Sara Hamilton set a new 100m freestyle personal best and helped GB's 4x100m relay team win the silver medal last night at the European Junior Championships, Finland (14-18 July).

Sixteen year old Hamilton, one of four Scots in the event, had travelled to the competition in Helsinki with the hope of improving on her twelfth place in the 50m freestyle at the same event a year ago.

"She was ranked tenth going into last night's final and swam a super race to finish fifth, producing a personal best of 56.75 seconds," said delighted Swim Aberdeenshire's Performance Coach, Gary Paterson.

"Later on she followed up as part of the 4x100m freestyle team. She swam the anchor leg, in a split of 56.39 seconds, which was a huge contribution towards the team winning the silver medal.

"Their time of 3:46.60 beat the French girls into third place and was very close to the 3:46.06 winning time of the German girls."

Hamilton is a long term member of South Aberdeenshire Swimming, joining Paterson's squad in January 2009.

Supporting her is the Grampian Institute of Sport, part of sportscotland's institute of sport area network, which focuses on preparing Scotland's best athletes to perform on the world stage by providing high performance expertise. The institute organises her Strength & Conditioning programme and supports her for other cross training elements.

Hamilton's tenacity combined with an ability to race were qualities that first impressed Paterson, virtues which she brought to the fore this week. Having missed out on a Commonwealth Games pre-qualifying time at last month's Scottish Championships, she has bounced back in style.

!I'm really proud of Sara because she was focussed on getting a qualifying time at the Commonwealth Games trials and she was very disappointed not to have achieved it there," said Paterson.

"Being able to step back up to international competition and race to personal best times last night proved her great sense of character. That is the nature of sports, to have the ability to get back up and compete and she has shown the capability to do that."

Hamilton will now turn her focus to tomorrow (Saturday 17 July) night's 50m freestyle event.