Rio 2016: Yorkshire trio miss out as focus turns to Adam Peaty to start Rio haul

Alicia Blagg, left, looks disconsolate after she and her partner Rebecca Gallantree, the two City of Leeds divers, came up short in their bid for a medal in the 3m synchro competition at the Olympics (Picture: PA).

Before Adam Peaty swam for gold in the 100m breaststroke in the early hours of this morning, Lizzie Armitstead, in the women’s cycling road race, and City of Leeds duo Alicia Blagg and Rebecca Gallantree, in diving’s 3m synchro, came up agonisingly short.

Armitstead, after a week in which she had been embroiled in a scandal and was given a reprieve over three whereabouts ‘failures’, finished fifth along Copacabana beach following a gruelling road race.

And Wakefield teenager  Blagg and her long-time competitive partner Gallantree were sixth in the 3m synchro, having at one stage held third place.

Blagg, 19, had been receiving injections in a hand injury all week and was left cursing her fortune.

There was also a highly-creditable fourth-place finish for Sheffield swimmer Max Litchfield in the 400m individual medley, and it was in the pool that Team GB were expected to deliver their first medal.

Peaty, 21, from Uttoxeter, lowered his own world record in the heats of the 100m breaststroke on Saturday and went into the final in the early hours of Monday morning as a firm favourite to win Britain’s first men’s Olympic swimming gold since 1988 and their first medal of the 2016 Games.

Olympics: Pages 2-3.