Keri-Anne Payne finishes fourth in Olympic open water 10km swim

BRITAIN’S Keri-Anne Payne suffered Olympic heartbreak to finish fourth in the women’s open water marathon swim.

After 10,000m in the Serpentine lake of Hyde Park, the Stockport swimmer was edged out of a podium place by just one TENTH of a second.

Payne, 24, was the silver medallist in Beijing four years ago and a favourite to be back amongst the gongs in London.

But Hungarian Eva Risztov blasted a fast pace from the off to just pip USA’s Haley Anderson to a deserved gold in 1hr 57min 38sec, with Italian Martina Grimaldi edging out Payne for bronze.

After the unprecedented support for the men’s triathlon on Tuesday, Hyde Park again attracted huge galleries for the gruelling event.

An exhausted Payne, who marries fellow Team GB swimmer David Carry in a month, said: “It didn’t go my way from the start.

“I really tried to get back up to leading but Risztov did such a great job.

“The top 25 swimmers in the world today are here, so to come out fourth in the world is not too bad but not quite what I wanted for the crowd and all the people who have worked to get me here.

“I was hurting most of the swim. Open water is about making the right decisions at the rght time. I just didn’t have enough at the end unfortunately.”

With two miles to go, five-woman broke clear of the chasing pack before it came down to straight sprint between Risztov and Anderson, with the Hungarian reaching up to touch the finish board first.