It was a sorry morning for Great Britain's 100m women breaststrokers with no representation in the semi-finals of the Olympics at the Aquatic Centre.
Siobhan-Marie O'Connor is the baby of the swimming team at 16 and given the individual medley is her specialist discipline, qualification last month required an almighty effort.
Her time of 1:08.32 was 0.24 outside the new personal best she set at the second trials in Sheffield, although that would not have seen her through.
While O'Connor certainly has a bright future, for Kate Haywood, this may mark the countdown to the end of her career after her 1:09.22 placed the Melbourne-based swimmer 28th.
Haywood was fighting back tears after the race and admitted it may be time to call it a day.
She said: "It was awful, I'm absolutely gutted. I've had 10 years of this and maybe it is my time to finally hang up the goggles and move on to something else.
"I wasn't even the fastest Brit so I don't get that relay spot either. It was a hard day but I'll get over it and support the team for the rest of the week and look forward to some better swimming from them. I knew coming into this it was my last thing, moving on to new things.
"It's amazing out there, everyone clapping for me. You can't really finish on better than that - I wish I had the evening swim but it was so tough, you had to go 67 to even make the semis, it was always going to be hard but it's one of those things unfortunately."
O'Connor, in contrast, was satisfied with her efforts on her Games debut, and the Bath ITC swimmer said: "I was happy with it, I would liked to have gone the best time but that's always hard in the mornings.
"It's such a great experience getting out there and racing in front of everyone. Happy I posted a good time. I wanted to see how fast I could go and post a time for the relay so hopefully I've done so."