Rio 2016: James Guy comes up short for Team GB and fails to follow Adam Peaty example

Bury swimmer was in the medals after 100m but faded in the 200m free

Britain's James Guy fell out of the medal places (Getty)

Britain’s James Guy was unable to follow the blistering example set by Adam Peaty in the pool on Monday night when he could only finish fourth in the men’s 200m freestyle final.

Guy was in third at 100m in a fantastic race won by the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang, who has been at the centre of the drugs row with the Australian Mack Horton, but could only come home fourth.

The race was a cracker with the South African Chad Le Clos – he of Michael Phelps beating fame from London 2012 and whose father Bert became as famous as him following his BBC interview with Clare Balding – setting a blistering pace only to be caught in the last 30m by Sun. For a time Le Clos was well clear and looked to have gold in his grasp.

It was a bitter disappointment for Guy who had come to Rio with high hopes following his gold medal at the World Championships in Kazan, Russia, last year when he had beaten Sun into second place but he faded as the high quality field hit the wall.

Guy’s time was 1min 45.49sec only 0.26 seconds behind Conor Dwyer of USA in third. Sun won in 1:44.64, Le Clos touched in 1:45.23.

Sun will not be a popular winner in Australia after his very public and bitter row with Horton over the Chinese swimmer’s doping violation (or ‘mistake’ according to his country’s Olympic association). Horton had called Yang a “drug cheat”.

Guy had been strangely off colour in his semi-final on Sunday night, too, coming home in third place behind Dwyer and Paul Biedermann of Germany. The Lancastrian got a place back on then German – but he was hoping for so much more.