Swimming: Morgan goes close in the dive for gold: Best of British not good enough against near-perfect Russian

THE MARGIN between success and failure in diving is never much more than an out-of-place elbow or an angle of over-rotation in entering the water. Rarely has that wafer been as transparently thin as it was yesterday, however, when Britain's Robert Morgan failed to win the gold medal by three-hundredths of a mark at the European Swimming Championships here.

Even his fellow competitors were congratulating the 26-year- old Sheffield-based Welshman after his 10th and final dive in the 10 metres highboard, a back one-and-a-half somersault with three-and-a-half twists, had seemingly cemented his first place with 80.64 points, the fourth highest mark of the competition.

Dimitry Sautin, too, had all but given up hope of a gold to supplement his silver in the 3m event. 'I was thinking I might struggle for silver,' the Russian said, but instead got a faint kiss on perfection to score 85.44 for a total of 617.73. His, the last dive of the competition, had deprived Britain of its first gold at Ponds Forge Pool.

Diving is a sport where strength of mind is more important than force of limb. The diver does not get the swimmer's physical outlet for tension for although there is a release brought about by plunging 30 feet at 50mph into water. By then the damage or otherwise has already been done.

The Welshman won a Commwealth Games gold three years ago but never has he produced the quality that elevated him from third to first place with one round to go. The dive, a reverse three-and-a-half somersault, looked more like an intricate dive-bomb of public baths notoriety until Morgan stretched out feet from the water and made an entrance that created barely a ripple.

He had entranced the judges, too, for his score of 87.72 would be the best of the day. But it was not quite enough to put him beyond Sautin's reach. 'I wasn't sure I'd won because I knew Dimitri and Jan Hampel (the bronze medallist) were capable of perfect 10s,' a surprisingly cheerful Morgan said. 'It was the greatest performance of my life but it wasn't quite good enough.'

Morgan, like most of the British performers here, has a hand- to-mouth existence that is ironically underlined by his principal backer being the rice manufacturer Uncle Ben. 'I spend all of my life overdrawn,' he said, while emphasising that his inclination to continue to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 will depend upon increased sponsorship.

'My greatest handicap is lack of money for basic things like transport. I spent half the the national championships pushing a car around because it kept breaking down. I was dreading something like that happening here in Sheffield.'

Karen Pickering, meanwhile, is becoming practised in medal ceremonies. On Tuesday she anchored the British 4x200m freestyle relay team to a bronze medal and yesterday she got an identical reward in the individual version.

The 21-year-old from Ipswich had not encouraged optimisim by finishing sixth in the 100m, her best-ranked event, two days ago but demonstrated a perverseness she readily admitted to by surpassing all expectation in yesterday's longer race. She was sixth at the first turn and the half-way point but charged up the final 100 metres to pip Sweden's Malin Nilsson by 0.1 seconds for third place.

Pickering's medal was matched by Marie Hardiman, who also confounded expectation in the women's 200m breaststroke. The 18-year-old from Birmingham broke her personal best twice during the day, saving the best for the final in which she clocked 2min 32.48sec, a shaving of 0.7sec off her pre-championships mark. Most startling of all is that this week is the first time she has swum for Great Britain.