“We need an inquiry...”

This was backed by strong performances at last year's world championships, but Hannah Miley, Ellen Gandy and Fran Halsall all failed to deliver on their pre-Games potential.

Michael Jamieson claimed a stunning silver in the 200m breaststroke and Rebecca Adlington delivered two bronze medals, but the British camp had little else to celebrate.

And Matthew O'Connor, who is the co-director of the BEST elite aquatic training centre in Colonia Sant Jordi and competed in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games and the 1990 and 1994 Commonwealth Games, agrees that an inquiry should be carried out.

Team GB swimmers have regularly used his elite training centre here in Majorca, so Matthew knows many of the swimmers, but he agreed with the critics that the team, in the wake of Beijing, have not perhaps put enough hard work into their training. “The same has been said about the Australian team, as well,” Matthew said yesterday. “It's 1/5 talent and 4/5 training and I think that there is too much sports science involved in the sport nowadays and not enough hard work,” he said. “Yes, I think on the back of the team's performance in London, a good hard look has got to be taken as to what went wrong. “May be the team have been too pampered and need to be brought down to earth a little and made to get back to their roots in the pool,” he added. “I've watched Rebecca Adlington, Hannah Miley and Michael Jamieson train for the games here and they really did work hard, they really put the hours in in the pool but we need to look at the team as a whole and where it went wrong. “I felt really sorry for Hannah, she has been working so hard but she could not pull it off on the day,” Matthew said. “Perhaps now, the team as a whole will realise that they are not as good as they thought, realise that they are not that special and get back to basics and that, like I've said, is hard work,” Matthew added.