Rio 2016: A day of disappointments as long-awaited gold rush eludes Team GB

Team GB suffer a bleak day as near misses begin to become a worrying habit across the board

David Florence admitted his mistakes after finishing last (Getty)

It was a day of disappointments for Team GB in Rio on Tuesday as medal chances came and went leaving the team to rue what might have been.

Perhaps the most golden of golden chances was canoeist David Florence’s who blew it on his final run when he clipped two gates and finished last. The Scot had been in good form and the course seemed to suit his power perfectly but it wasn’t to be.

He touched gate 13 and couldn’t recover from the setback knocking into 21 too. “That’s that,” he said afterwards. “Four years of preparation for that and a little mistake. That all makes it seem a little bit of a waste of time. That’s the way it goes.”

Florence competes in the C” with Richard Hounslow on Thursday as they attempt to go one better than the silver medal they won together at the London Games. Florence was joined by Ellie Downie of the women’s gymnastics team in feeling down.

Just had Louis Smith had in the men’s team 24 hours earlier, Downie fell from a piece of apparatus that cost crucial points. Downie’s downer came on the balance beam during her devilishly difficult routine and arguably the points she lost were the difference between a medal and the fifth place Team GB had to settle for.

She gave it her all in the remainder of the rotations and a wonderful vault gave GB hope but in truth a medal went when Downie did.

There was some strange goings-on in the diving pool which for some unknown, or unthinkable, reason had turned a strange green colour. It didn’t stop Tonia Couch and her 16-year-old synchronised diving partner, Lois Toulson, plunging in from 10m.

They were good, recording a personal best, but not good enough to put a dent in the Chinese who won gold. Couch, 27, and Toulson settled for fifth but Couch was impressed with her partner describing her talents as “insane”. “I've said to her so many times that people are going to have to watch out for this girl,” Couch said.

“She's insane and for a 16-year-old diver to do what she did today, people better watch out.” In the tennis, Johanna Konta came from a set down to beat Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova and reach the third round of the women's tennis singles in a gruelling match. It was a fantastic effort from Konta who is now in the quarter-finals.

That offered a ray of sunshine, if not a medal, on a bleak day and the near misses are becoming a habit for Team GB.

Already we have seen James Guy and Hannah Miley fail to deliver in the pool, Geraint Thomas come a cropper with gold in the distance, the women’s rugby 7s team lost to a team they had beaten the day before in a bronze medal match, William Fox Pitt and Smith making costly errors… Maybe they are all out of Team GB’s system now and we can prepare for a gold rush.