Fine-tuning would decide the medals in the inaugural Olympic synchronised diving event off the 10m platform, Leon Taylor had said after he and Peter Waterfield had finished third for Britain at the European championships last year.

They finished fourth here today, missing a medal by an excruciating three points - the equivalent of a tenth of a second in a swimming race. Their fine-tuning at training bases 200 miles apart - not exactly ideal for synchronicity - did not quite get them on to the medal rostrum. They had finished behind Germany and Russia in Europe a year ago but China were always going to be the threat on a world platform.

The odd couple of the diving world - Waterfield is short and dark-haired, Taylor tall and bleached-blonde - accumulated 335.34 points, compared with the 338.88 that gave the bronze medal to Germany’s Jan Hempel and Heiko Meyer. Dimitri Sautin and Igor Loukachine, of Russia, took the first synchronised title with 365.04 points, ahead of the 358.74 points earned by China’s Liang Tian and Jia Hu.

The German judge had given Britain the lowest marks but Mike Edge and Lindsay Fraser, the coaches of Taylor and Waterfield, respectively, believed the scoring to have been fair "on the whole". The divers felt the same.

Taylor, 5ft 10in and 10st 7lb, said he and Waterfield, 5ft 6in and 9st, were pleased to have finished fourth. It was, he noted, one place better than the best finish among the 41 members of the British swimming team.

Geoff Cook, the diving member of Great Britain's Amateur Swimming Federation, said that he could not wait to "rub swimming’s nose in it when we get home". Asked if he really felt the comparison relevant, Cook said that National Lottery funding had been decided on results and numbers, and diving had always been the poor cousin. No longer.

When asked what the secret of their synchronisation was as they plunged from the dizzy heights of the 10-metre platform at 35mph, and shatter the surface of the water like twin bullets fired from the same barrel, Taylor replied: "Telepathy."