Burnell suffers more medal agony after trailing in fourth

The 24-year-old was furious at the end of the Olympic event at Copacabana Beach in Rio last August, believing he had been impeded when sprinting for a medal. Instead he was disqualified.

And Burnell’s bid to make amends in Lake Balaton finished 2.3 seconds from gold and 1.6secs off the podium.

Holland’s Ferry Weertman added the world title to the Olympic gold medal he won in Rio, winning in one hour 51 minutes 58.50secs.

Jordan Wilimovsky of the United States was second, 0.10secs behind, and Marc-Antoine Olivier of France third, 0.70secs adrift. Burnell finished in 1hr 52mins 00.80secs, while team-mate Caleb Hughes, who also trains in Loughborough, was 24th.

“I’m gutted,” Burnell said. “We gave it everything this year – we put absolutely everything into it. 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 any more but I wasn’t the best man on the day unfortunately.”

Leeds’s Lois Toulson made a shock exit in the individual 10m platform preliminary round.

European champion Toulson won mixed 10m synchronised silver on Saturday before finishing seventh with Tonia Couch in the women’s 10m synchronised event. But the 17-year-old could only finish 23rd in the individual. Team-mate Robyn Birch reached the semi-finals in 16th. Birch later finished 13th in the team event alongside Dan Goodfellow.