ATHLETE Candy Hawkins has picked up two more international medals this week at the Deaflympics in Melbourne and had the honour of leading the Great Britain deaf team out at the opening ceremony.

The former double gold medallist from could not emulate her 1997 achievements, settling for two fine bronze medals this time round in the 800m and 1500m, but was delighted to be Britain’s standard bearer on the opening day.

The Ashford AC middle distance runner was the popular choice of her teammates to carry the flag when the 20th Games opened.

Candy (33), missed the last games in Rome through injury but the only former double gold medallist in the 100-strong squad was pleased just to be back and running well again to get amongst the medals at the Olympic Park.

Both were great races for Britain with her teammate Lauren Peffers from Scotland taking the silver in the 1500m behind Russian Nelli Erofeeva, with Candy a close third.

In the 800m final the same three contested the medals with the 16-year-old Scot this time rising to the font to beat the Russian with Candy again in third less than half a second behind the Russian.

Candy is the current world record holder for the women’s mile on the track and women’s 10km on the road for deaf women.

In the 800m Candy clocked 2:15.88 with Peffers winning in 2:14.90 while in the 1500m Peffers kicked for home with 200m to go, but 15 metres from the line she was passed by Erofeeva who went on to claim gold in a time of 4:40.43. Peffers was less than a second behind, clocking 4:41.16 to claim silver, while Hawkins came home for bronze in 4:44.02.