After winning a remarkable silver medal at London 2012, Michael Jamieson has admitted that he has severe doubts about whether he will even make it to a second Olympic Games. The 27 year-old was only able to finish in sixth place in the 200m breaststroke at the Edinburgh International last night but the more worrying thing was his time; Jamieson finished in 2 minutes 16.13 seconds which leaves him with a significant improvement needed if he if to make it into Team GB for the Rio Olympics.

The British Olympic trials are in just four over weeks’ time and with a raft of world-class British breaststrokers fighting for just two places, Jamieson knows that a much improved performance will be required.

“This is rubbish and miles away from where I need to be,” he said. “Especially when nobody’s doing anything special. It’s not like I’m not capable of the times that are kicking around just now. I don’t want to overreact, I’ve still got another month [until the trials] but usually I’m swimming 2:10 at this stage of the season so I’m quite a bit off.”

Jamieson has had a notoriously tough time of late. He famously lost out to his compatriot, Ross Murdoch, for gold at Glasgow 2014 and then missed out on selection for the World Championships last year.

For an athlete of Jamieson’s class, this loss of form is clearly hitting him hard. “I’m just getting a bit fed up swimming like this,” he said. “Overall, I still have the belief but I’m not swimming world-class times. All the respect in the world to the guys next to me but I know I should be head and shoulders in front. I don’t know what else I can do and at the moment, I’ve got a long way to go. There’s been a number of times I’ve been holding back the tears over the last couple of years – I don’t want it to finish but it’s hard to take swimming like this. I care so much about it, I don’t want it to be over.”

After missing out on World Championship selection last year – the first major championship he had not been selected for since 2009 – Jamieson relocated from Bath to Edinburgh in an attempt to reignite his career. The move has not proved quite as successful as he had hoped though.

“I made the move to try and address a few of the issues with my speed but it’s almost gone the opposite way, it’s regressed even more,” he said. “When you change programme, you’ve got to buy into it 100 per cent and I have done, I’m doing absolutely everything I’ve been asked. Sometimes a change works, sometimes it doesn’t.

"In Bath, I was doing a similar training model and obviously I had some great results but I wanted to change it because I wanted to be the first guy to go 2:06. It was a gamble but I’d rather be going for it then settling for the results I’ve had in the past and I take responsibility for that move. But the physiological adaptations seem to be pretty muted now whereas when I was a bit younger, I could respond to training stimulus really quickly. And we’re running out of time.”

Jamieson may be demoralised but, encouragingly, he has not stopped looking for solutions. “I’m thinking about this non-stop, every day. I’m talking to as many people as I can and I’ve got all the analysis. My physiological make-up suggests it’s still there. But transferring it into the water just now seems to be the problem.”