Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield missed out on a medal in the men's synchronised 10m platform.
Agony for British duo as they come up short in diving final
Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield missed out on a medal in the final of the men's synchronised 10m platform as they finished fourth.
The British duo made an outstanding start and led the competition at the halfway point after three precision dives.
But a weak effort in the fourth round, attempting their reverse three-and-a-half somersaults dive, saw them slip out of the medal places and they were unable to make up sufficient ground in the final two rounds.
In the end they finished with a total of 454.65 which left them some nine points behind the US team of Nick McCrory and David Boudia who took bronze.
As expected it was Chinese duo Cao Yuan and Zhang Yanquan who took the gold medal by a comfortable margin, while Mexicans German Sanchez and Ivan Garcia Navarro proved the surprise package as they claimed silver after an adventurous selection of dives.
The British pair had initially looked on course to snatch the first home gold medal of these Olympics when they led the Chinese after three dives.
After a near-perfect compulsory set of dives Daley attracted a perfect 10, with Waterfield not far behind, for their back three-and-a-half somersaults to leave them 2.4 points clear at the top.
Inevitably the response of the Chinese, still unbeaten in international competition during their young careers, was to post 10s on their next dive and when both Daley and Waterfield then missed their entries they had suddenly slipped to fourth.
Audible groan
It drew an audible groan inside the Aquatics Centre and while they produced a solid forward four-and-a-half somersaults - their hardest dive - next up they had left themselves with too much work to do.
"The last two dives were brilliant but it's just not enough on the day it just wasn't meant to be," Daley said afterwards.
"It started off really well. We got a PB in the first two. The third dive was really good. It was just our fourth dive. If you miss one dive like that and you're gone. It is the way sport goes
"It's annoying but what can you do."
The result means Daley will now have to wait until the individual platform on the penultimate day of the Games to claim an Olympic medal - the only honour to have eluded him so far in his career.
The 18-year-old will leave the Olympic Village and return to a training base in Southend for six days in preparation for his anticipated clash with China's world champion Bo Qiu.
Daley memorably beat Bo to win the world platform title as a 15-year-old in Rome, but the Chinese has proved unbeatable since.
Where Bo has been unconquerable, Daley and Waterfield had targeted the teenage pairing of Cao, 17, and Zhang, 18, today in their first major competition.
But the teenage duo proved nerveless as they weathered the early storm, and crowd support, from the Britons before keeping China on course for a clean sweep of all eight gold medals in the diving pool.
