T he idea of taking Great Britain’s wonderchild to the Beijing Games had always been to introduce him as softly as possible to the hard reality of Olympic competition. However, the opposite seemed increasingly the case yesterday in the wake of Tom Daley’s last-place finish with his partner, Blake Aldridge, in the ten-metre synchronised event, when first Aldridge accused the 14-year-old of letting him down and then Daley’s father replied that Aldridge’s career as Daley’s partner is almost definitely over.

Steve Foley, the performance director of British Diving, simply accused the pair of “cracking under pressure”. All of which seems an extraordinary way to blood Daley, especially with him having to dive again in the individual competition next week.

Daley’s sights have always been more focused on London 2012 and although Aldridge, 26, would struggle to remain at world-class level by then, Rob Daley, Tom’s father, said yesterday that he had almost certainly blown his chance of partnering Daley in the future.

“It’s not exactly team spirit to start running your partner down,” Rob said. “When Tom hears about this and reads the stories, I don’t suppose he’ll want to dive with him again.

“If you can’t take it on the chin, you shouldn’t be out there. Blake’s out there because of Tom; if he’s got sour grapes, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s easy to blame a 14-year-old.”

Blaming the 14-year-old on this occasion consisted of claiming that that he had outdived Daley and that the pressure and publicity had made Daley the weak link. “I didn’t blow anything and so I can go home happy with my performance, but unfortunately it’s a partnership, you both have to be on the top of your game,” Aldridge said. “I wasn’t on the top of my game, but Tom was nowhere near the top of his.”

What is indisputable is that the team dynamic between the pair exploded midway through the competition. In a field of eight, Daley and Aldridge had been expected to finish sixth, with an underdog’s bid for the bronze. However, they were struggling after two rounds and well adrift of third place after three.

It was after the fifth dive, though, that Daley appeared to have started swearing at his partner. Aldridge said that the teenager had “had a pop” at him. “When we were sitting down, I saw my mum in the audience and I asked her to give me a call and Tom went to me, ‘Why are you on the phone? We’re in a competition, we’ve got another dive to do,’ ” Aldridge said. “That is Thomas, overnervous. Today he was worrying about everyone and everything and that to me is the sole reason why he didn’t perform.”

However, making the phone call mid-event to his mother hardly suggests that Aldridge was in the right frame of mind. As Foley said: “It is unusual and it is strange timing and it tells me that they were under pressure.”

Foley also disagreed with Aldridge’s assessment that he had not only outperformed Daley, but also handled the pressure better. “It looked like on the third dive, Blake missed his grab on entry because the water came up so high you had to go for an umbrella,” he said. “When you’re making little mistakes like your entries, that’s nothing but nerves.”

In fact, Foley said that the pair’s chemistry had been all wrong from early on. “I could see in the showers [between dives], they weren’t a team after the third dive,” he said. “I can see these things. What I’m reading is: it’s a cauldron, put the five rings in front of them and something changes. Before the third dive, Tom was in a hurry, he wasn’t relaxed and calm. And Blake walked around as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

Daley and Aldridge’s failure yesterday only mirrored that of the women’s pair, Tandi Gerrard and Hayley Sage, who had finished in last place the day before. “What I’m seeing at the moment is an inexperienced team cracking under the Olympic pressure, because the body language is different,” Foley said.

Whatever the reason, Daley and Aldridge performed way below their potential. When they last dived here, they set a British record of 446 points, which, yesterday, would have won them bronze. As it was, they scored 408.48, which, Foley said, “is probably their lowest score ever as a team”.

Foley also emphasised that, apart from the seemingly obligatory pair of champions from China, all the leading pairs yesterday had Olympic experience to guide them through the event and that this would therefore serve Daley well. As a lesson in the Olympics, though, you wonder how positive yesterday can have been.

Indeed, it was astonishing that Aldridge should have elected not to accept their defeat with the unity of a team, but to suggest that Daley was the weak link. The judges’ scores show that Aldridge did outscore Daley in four of the six dives, but only marginally, and had Daley mirrored Aldridge’s level of execution, they would have finished only seventh rather than eighth.

“For me, my time was now to get a medal,” Aldridge said. And after this, it does seem hard to envisage another opportunity. Daley will surely have many more and he will hope that this one forever remains the worst.