Andrew Smith's battle with Welshman Richard Vaughan for the men's singles spot at the Olympics took a new turn at the European Championships at Herning, Denmark, when the England number one lost in the second round.
Seventh seed Smith fell to experienced Russian Stanislav Pukhov 21-12 21-17 on a day when a host of other Olympic hopefuls went tumbling.
Aamir Ghaffar and Rajiv Ouseph, Middlesex's national champions past and present, also went out in the second round.
A win would have put world number 31 Smith in the last 16 and virtually clinched his Olympic place but coach Ian Wright said: "He has just run out of gas.
"The effort of reaching the semi-finals of the Indian Open earlier this month and then doing well for us in the team event has taken it out of him. "But we think the points he collected in doing so well in the Indian Open will make the difference.
"He is not used to reaching semi-finals at that level and needs a break."
While the Portsmouth 23-year-old slipped up, world number 41 and twelfth seed Vaughan overcame a mid-match wobble to reach the last 16 and a clash with second seed Przemyslaw Wacha of Poland after outplaying Sweden's Magnus Sahlberg 21-11 14-21 21-13.
England's women's singles players fared better with three-times national champion Elizabeth Cann and Commonwealth gold medallist Tracey Hallam through to the last 16 along with Essex teenager Sarah Walker and Scotland's Commonwealth bronze medallist Susan Hughes.
All four are back in action later in the day along with defending women's doubles champions Gail Emms and Donna Kellogg, who cruised through their opening test.
Top seeds Emms and Kellogg are also through to the mixed doubles quarter-finals.
Emms and Nathan Robertson, the 2004 European champions as well as the Olympic silver medallists, Commonwealth champions and 2006 world champions, won the opening match of a 102-contest programme on the busiest day of the tournament.
Within minutes national champions Kellogg and Anthony Clark followed them through.
In the last eight they will face team-mate Robert Blair, the Edinburgh-born former Scotland international, and Scotland's Imogen Bankier.
Bankier, who faced Robertson and Emms for the first time at the All England quarter-finals last month, is looking forward to taking on England's other top pair.
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