British marathon swimmer Jack Burnell narrowly missed out on a World Championship medal after finishing an agonising fourth in the Men’s 10km event.
Burnell gave everything on the Lake Balaton course in Hungary but missed out on a podium place in a five-way fight to the finish. The difference, after nearly two hours in the water, was just one-and-a-half seconds.
Placed second at the 2.5km and 5km stages, the race pace increased over the second half of the event but Burnell kept at the front passing 7.5km in third place.
As the finish neared a group of five separated and pushed for the touch. Gold went to Ferry Weertman of the Netherlands, silver to Jordan Wilimovsky of the USA and Marc-Antoine Olivier of France was third with Burnell just behind.
“I’m gutted. We gave it everything this year - we put absolutely everything into it,” said Burnell. “It’s so hard to find words when you’ve just finished fourth at a World Championships.
“It’s hard to draw positives at this stage. Obviously we wanted a medal at least but it didn’t happen today. I couldn’t have given anymore but I wasn’t the best man on the day unfortunately.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better race in terms of how I swam it and where I was placed around the course. I felt really good throughout the race.
“Coming into the finish I felt strong and those boys went at the same pace I did. Maybe I should have made a move as little earlier but those are things we will look at when we go back to the drawing board.”
British and National Centre, Loughborough team mate Caleb Hughes finished in 24th place.
For live updates and unique content follow British Swimming across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
For live results Click HereAt the diving pool, Robyn Birch and Dan Goodfellow finished in thirteenth place overall with a score of 303.15.