Liam Tancock raced in leggings at the European Championships here last night and had reason to regret not having worn the top half of his new high-tech suit. He fell 0.03sec shy of a place in a 100 metres backstroke final that he had earmarked as being an important race test on the way to British Olympic trials in Sheffield next month and the Games in Beijing.

World No 3 behind two Americans last season and winner of bronze medals in the 50 metres and 100 metres at the World Championships in Melbourne a year ago, Tancock then got a second bite at the cherry. He tied at 55.11sec with Marco Di Tora, of Italy, for the ninth-place final reserve slot and faced a swim-off. He recorded 55.12 but the rested Italian touched ahead, on 54.75.

In the first of his races, Tancock struggled to keep pace with Aristeidis Grigoriadis, of Greece, in the next lane, turning 0.21sec down and fading a fraction with every stroke on the way home. Tancock has swum 53.46, with which time he shares the European record with Helge Meeuw, of Germany, who watched from the stands yesterday having opted out with a heavy bout of sinusitis.

The British champion was clearly in no shape to take on the best of the rested majority of Europe on a night on which the home quartet of Inge Dekker, Ranomi Kromowidjoj, Femke Heemskerk and Marleen Veldhuis took a sledgehammer to the world record in the women’s 4 x 100 metres freestyle. Their 3min 33.62sec victory made them the first Dutch foursome to hold the global standard since 1936. The previous world record had stood to Germany in 3:35.22. Not since the days of the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s has an improvement of that margin been made in the sprint relay.

It offered a glimpse of the sizzling world that Tancock will face in Beijing at the end of a season in which standards around the world have soared to new heights. Of his present form and double outing, Tancock, 22, said: “These things happen. It was great race practice. I’m not ready to race fast yet. I’d have liked to have gone faster than that but I was pleased with this morning.”

In heats, he swam 54.98sec, an effort that reflected the need to race hard early in the day in readiness for the first morning finals ever held in Olympic swimming in Beijing this summer, an unpopular move that was dictated by NBC Television to ensure prime-time finals in the United States.

Ben Titley, Tancock’s coach at Loughborough, believes he is a potential medal-winner despite being at the start of his taper (rest from heavy training) in readiness for trials. Tancock dismissed suggestions that the race had been a setback. “Its not a setback,” he said. “I would have liked to be in the final but I’m not ready to swim fast.”

The object of the exercise had been to get race practice against some of the best in the world, regardless of the result, and analyse his strengths and weaknesses before domestic trials at which he will not race 100 metres. As a medal-winner in Melbourne last year, he is preselected for Beijing in that event. Tancock will train in Eindhoven today before returning home tomorrow.

In the 4 x 100 metres freestyle relay, a young Britain quartet of Chris Fox, Adam Brown, Ryan Bennett and Grant Turner finished eighth in 3min 20.96sec, some five seconds off the pace of the champions from Sweden (after Russia’s disqualification). The average age of the finalists was 26. The Britons, three of whom have been based permanently at the Southport School on the Gold Coast for two years, have an average age of 18.

“That’s the best we’ve ever swum together,” Turner, who, with Brown, raced inside 50sec, said. Brown recorded 49.02 in morning heats. It took Simon Burnett, the British record-holder and Commonwealth champion, until he was 23 before he raced inside 50 seconds. The London 2012 generation is on the way.

Milorad Cavic, of Serbia, set the first European record of the meeting with 23.25 in a semi-final of the 50 metres butterfly. The standard had stood to Sergiy Breus, of Ukraine, in 23.38 since 2005 and is third-fastest ever behind the world record held by Roland Schoeman, of South Africa, in town to watch his rivals on his way from his training base in Arizona to South Africa’s Olympic trials in April.

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