Rio silver medallist Prenot fails in Tokyo Olympics breaststroke bid

OMAHA, United States: Josh Prenot, the 200m breaststroke silver medallist at the 2016 Rio Olympics, failed to make it out of the heats Wednesday (Jun 16) at the US Olympic swimming trials.

Prenot, seeded fourth in the preliminaries, posted the 17th-fastest time of 2min 13.42sec, narrowly missing a spot in the semi-finals and shortly thereafter saying on Twitter he would take a break from the sport.

"I'm sorry to the people who have been rooting for me and believing in me," Prenot tweeted. "It's not for lack of effort, but I'm clearly not anywhere near my best and haven't been for quite a while.

"Not taking my name off the anti-doping list just yet but also definitely not racing for the next year at least. We'll see if I forget how much I currently hate it and end up missing it at some point."

Prenot's time was more than five seconds slower than his time in Rio, where he took silver behind Dmitriy Balandin, who became Kazakhstan's first Olympic swimming gold medallist.

Continuing the youth trend at the trials, 18-year-old Matt Fallon led the way into the 200m breaststroke semi-finals with a time of 2:10.13.