Bothwell star Gilmour landed a milestone medal recently

Kirsty Gilmour battled through the pain barrier as she landed her 10th European medal in Denmark.

Losing 21-16, 21-17 to home player Line Kjaersfeldt in the final saw Gilmour win her fifth European Championships, and it’s a third consecutive second-placed finish at the competition.

Kirsty also has a silver and bronze from the European Games, and an individual and two team bronze medals.

While the 31-year-old from Bothwell knows winning silver instead of gold will raise eyebrows, under the circumstances, she is very much taking it.

The three-time Olympian said: “We really are shooting for that gold these days, and anything other than that means people raise their eyebrows.

“But considering what I was dealing with – a house move, and my back being in a fairly bad way – all things considered, I will take that silver medal and I will run with it.

“When I was having a wee cry in training on Tuesday, because I didn’t think I could move, if you had told me then that I would be walking away with a silver, I think I would have signed and bitten your hand off, immediately.”

Mauchline’s Adam Hall is the only other Scot to have won a silver medal at the European Championships, and Kirsty quipped: “Adam messaged me and was like ‘sorry for winning that other silver, it sound a lot better if you had won them all!’

“That’s my third consecutive silver medal and the whole year is very up and down, but to show that I can almost nail it for at lest this event, and show such consistency over so many years, does feel good.

“I pushed Line close, but she played a really good game, and it was in Denmark as well, so I had the crowd against me, but fair play to her, she played really well all week.

“It was going to be tough to beat her in the final, she was having a good run of it, even in the tour tournaments, as well.”

Gilmour, who has recently moved to Rutherglen, says there is no let-up in her busy schedule, even if she is taking a step back.

She said: “I’m back to Denmark for a Danish League final, and I play for a Czech team, so we have their final as well, and that’s on May 6 and 10, and then the next proper tournament is the Singapore Open in the last week of May, and then tie that together with the Indonesia Open in the first week of June.

“We are trying not to knock our pans in this year. Probably we would have done three, maybe four, tournaments last year, because it was an Olympic qualification year, but I’m trying to relax a bit more this year, give myself a wee bit more time in my nice new house.

“Having a few weeks here and there really makes a difference.

“Taking a step back is working. It’s pretty tough on the body just now. At the end of last year I had an injection into my right plantar fascia [a thick band of tissue that supports the arch of the foot, running from the heel to the toes], decided to get my wisdom tooth out the next week – so that was fun.

“I was building back up from that, and I’m at that age where I’m trying to work smarter, not harder.

“We’re trying to get the balance in training, mixing it with the tournament schedule as well, but it’s going OK so far.”