Pete Waterfield admitted fourth place feels like the worst place to finish after he and Tom Daley fell agonisingly short of an Olympic medal at the Aquatics Centre today.

The duo went together in the men’s 10m synchronised event and led the field at the halfway point ahead of world number one pair Yuan Cao and Yanquan Zhang of China.

But a mistake on the fourth dive saw the British pair fall out of the medal positions and although they finished strongly, the missed dive proved costly, with the Chinese securing the gold.

And Walthamstow-born Waterfield admitted he would rather have finished last than be left ruing one disappointing dive.

He explained: “It is the worst place to finish at the Olympics. I would rather finish last and at least then you know you have missed every dive.

“Knowing that you have missed one dive, I think it was only nine points which we would normally have done on that dive – it is our best dive – but unfortunately, I had a great start, I was spinning really well, but I just kicked my feet too high.

“Once you kick your feet too high, you have over-rotated and then there is no coming back from it. You can’t stop it.

“If you kick short, you can then try and fix it but it wasn’t that way around. We left ourselves with a little bit too much to do. Our tariff isn’t as much as some of the others as well so it just left us with too much to do.”

The pair will now go in the individual event but both insisted there was no blame on either part for not picking up a medal, stressing they do everything as a team.

Daley said: “We are a team. At the end of the day, that is it, full stop. We are a team. We win together and we lose together.

“Today was our fourth place and we are proud of being here at the Olympic Games, in front of a home crowd.

“It has been a tough year for me training-wise and it has been tough for Pete with injury this year. For us, we are glad to be here. We win as a team and lose as a team.”

And Waterfield added: “After that fourth dive, I actually said sorry to Tom. He said, “Don’t worry, we have got our next one and we need a big one”.

“Unfortunately it just wasn’t big enough to get back. But like Tom says, we win as a team and we lose as a team. It is nobody’s fault.”