The Olympic open water swim competition was a hardman's race.
When Canada's Richard Weinberger needed to make a move Tuesday, he faced a wall of men spread six wide hammering the water and each other in a fight to the finish.
It was the wrong place to be for the 26-year-old from Surrey, B.C. He won Olympic bronze four years ago in the 10-kilometre swim pushing the pace at the front instead of chasing.
Fumes from the support boats off Fort Copacabana constricting his chest, Weinberger couldn't jockey his way into the fray at the front.
"I knew at around 500 metres left I'd lost my chance to get on the podium," he said. "I improved tenfold since London and I knew I was strong enough to win this race. It just wasn't the day."
Weinberger finished 16.6 seconds back of gold medallist Ferry Weertman of the Netherlands in 17th.
The Dutchman got his hand on the overhead touch pad first amid a crush of bodies for a time of one hour 52 minutes 58.8 seconds.
Two-time world champion Spiros Gianniotis of Greece missed the touch with his left hand.
The oldest man in the field at 36, Gianniotis's head and shoulders were already under the pad as he swung his right arm around to slap it ahead of bronze medallist Marc-Antoine Olivier of France.
Weertman and Gianniotis were so close, they recorded identical times. Olivier was 2.2 seconds behind.
"Ferry . . . he showed all year how tough he was," Weinberger said. "He's the toughest guy out there and he proved it today."
As in soccer, yellow cards are issued for warnings and red cards mean ejection. Swimmers are alerted about their infractions by whistles.
"As the fourth lap started, there was a lot of fighting and open-water tactics used by these experienced guys that don't cause yellow cards or red cards," Weinberger said.
Those tactics include pushing competitors' legs down with your arm as it enters the water, and when waves roll you on top of another swimmer, taking full advantage of it.
Weinberger skipped his final refuelling stop and headed out for the fourth lap in fourth position, but "some of the bigger players started to go," his coach Steve Price explained.
"He needed to go there because as you see at the end there, when that frenzy goes on, that's not his strength. He's not the biggest, strongest guy in the pack and guys can muscle him out.
"He swam his guts out today, but he doesn't have the speed at the end to overtake those guys. He's like the rabbit who needs to go early and break them early."
Weinberger, who is six foot three and 179 pounds, won bronze in 2012 in a flat duck pond in London's Hyde Park.
Tuesday's open ocean swim in the swells couldn't have been more different.
"This is real open-water swimming and it's probably as wavy as it gets," he said.
Neither he nor Price had complaints about the water quality, which was a major story coming into these Games.
"It's beautiful out there," Weinberger said. "I recommend getting in there and bodysurfing a little bit."
Added Price: "It was never an issue for us. One of our docs described it as no better or no worse than Vancouver's English Bay."
Jarrod Poort of Australia set a cracking pace off the start and led for much of the race. The chase pack started reeling him in on the third lap.
Weinberger felt he had trained and prepared for every eventuality in the race. Once a terrible sleeper, he has regulated his sleep patterns in the four years since London.
He said frustration will fuel him to Tokyo in 2020.
"I'm pissed off," he said. "I've got to race. I can go farther, I can go harder and perfect my sleep. I can do better with my diet. I can do it."
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.