THERE was no world title and not even a silver lining for Michael Jamieson at the World Championships but despite missing out on the 200m breaststroke medals he is certain his time will come again.
The Glasgow swimmer, who won Olympic silver over the same distance at London 2012, was forced to settle for fifth place last night after clocking 2.09.14 minutes.
Nemesis Daniel Gyurta, who pipped him to gold last summer, took the title in a championship record of 2.07.23min with Marco Koch of Germany second and Finland's Matti Mattsson taking bronze.
Jamieson was also edged out by team-mate Andrew Willis at the wall, with the latter touching home one hundredth of a second faster.
It was a bitter pill to swallow for the Scot after coming of age 12 months ago but a bicep tendon injury ruined his preparations for Barcelona and despite clocking 2.07.78mins to win the British trials in June his fitness has dropped.
"I couldn't have done much more than that and it is easy to say 'why aren't you swimming as fast as last year?' But I have had a nightmare last couple of months," he said.
"I swam 2.07 at the trials and I said then that it wasn't me back to my best, I think that was me right at the end of my real fitness work and I could tolerate that. The injury didn't have as much of an effect then.
"My real strength is that back end 50 and that stems from conditioning, that is fitness that gives you that.
"Unfortunately this is just beyond that threshold and in the last couple of weeks I've just been losing fitness.
"I've said so many times before that it is all about winning medals and I'm the first person to say that I wasn't good enough tonight.
"I know that when I am 100% I can challenge Gyurta, last year gave me that belief to do that and trials this year shows what I can do at 100%."
Elsewhere, Edinburgh's Craig McNally rose to the occasion of his first senior final in his debut meet to touch home sixth in the 200m backstroke and obliterate his lifetime best and with it the Scottish record.
The 20-year-old swimmer's time of 1.55.67secs was the second fastest ever posted by a British swimmer and just 0.09secs shy of James Goddard's leading mark.
"I can't be disappointed with that, I've come in and done over a half-a-second PB and did what I have come here to do which is to try and get faster at each stage and move up the rankings," said McNally, who set his previous best of 1.56.36secs at the British trials in June.
"I've watched a lot of those guys as I was growing up at swimming meets and looked at them. I have always based my times off them to try and figure out when I would be in contention to swim with them so to be able to do it now in my first world championships is really happy.
"To finish in sixth place in the final is great. I am really happy and thought I had another fast time in me.
"Lochte is still producing really fast times and I'm looking forward to racing him for the next few years."
Meanwhile, a new look men's 4x200m freestyle relay have hope for the future after they reached last night's final and finished eighth in 7.12.00mins.
In the morning, James Guy, Robbie Renwick, Ieuan Lloyd and Josh Walsh clocked 7.13.00mins to reach the medal showdown in seventh, with Jak Scott replacing Lloyd for the final, and Renwick admitted the much-changed quartet are at the start of a long journey. It is a relatively young team so we are only going to keep on improving which is a positive thing," said Renwick.
"It is one traditionally we have always come outside the medals in and our target is Rio in 2016 and really it is better to sacrifice now than in three years time."
Britain's athletes are funded by UK Sport as the nation's high performance sports agency responsible for the strategic investment of £355m of National Lottery and Exchequer funding in Olympic and Paralympic sports preparing for Rio 2016. The ambition is to win more medals than in London 2012 while building a stronger more sustainable high performance system. www.uksport.gov.uk
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