British swimmer irate after 'ridiculous' marathon disqualification

With just two meters left, and a mass of bodies around him, Great Britain’s Jack Burnell figured he was in a good position to come away from the men's 10km open-water marathon with a medal.

Instead, he was adjudged to have impeded an opponent and subsequently disqualified from Tuesday's event.

Afterward, the Brit lashed out at race officials and described the scenes just off the shores of Copacabana beach as utter chaos.

"It's supposed to be the grandest stage of them all with everything perfect, all this great scenery, and the one thing that ruins it is the referees," Burnell told reporters. "There's 600 or however many boats out there, a ridiculous amount of boats - not needed - and every single person on the boat has no idea what they're doing.

"They're giving yellow cards out left, right, and center for absolutely nothing, and then disqualifying people two meters from the end when there's people grabbing hold of legs and everything. The whole thing was ridiculous, an absolute joke."

He added, "The first yellow card I got was coming down the straight back here - I was second, there was nobody either side of me, and the guy pulls out a yellow card! I couldn't have physically touched anybody. The yellow card there is meant to be for unnecessary contact. What do you want me to do?"

Burnell was originally given fifth place before he was disqualified. Ferry Weertman of the Netherlands came away with gold and Greece's Spiros Gianniotis claimed silver while Marc-Antoine Olivier of France and Zu Lijun of China finished in a tie for bronze.

All photos courtesy Action Images.