India's top swimmer Rehan Poncha set a new national mark in his pet event, the 400 metres individual medley, at the World swimming championships in Barcelona on Sunday but his effort was not enough to see him qualify for next year's Athens Olympics.
Poncha clocked 4 min 41.49 seconds to finish a lowly 41st in the competition though his timing was fraction of a second better than the earlier national record of 4.42:57 held jointly by Poncha and J Abhijit.
The Olympic qualifying mark for the event was 4:33.11 seconds.
The final day of the championship also saw Richa Mishra failing to notch up the required timing in the 400 metres individual medley in the women's category.
Richa, who had earlier set a national record in the 200 metres butterfly, came up with a pathetic performance today to finish 30th with a timing of 5:11.67, which was almost 11 seconds more than the Olympic qualifying mark.
The Indian swimmers, who came close to qualifying for the world's biggest sporting extravaganza on more than one occasion, will be returning home empty-handed since none of them managed to clear the first hurdle.
Shikha Tandon was distinctly unlucky to miss the qualifying marks by less than a second twice.
She failed to book berths in the 50m and 100m freestyle events after clocking less than a second slower than the required timings.
