A downcast Tyler Smith was left disappointed by his performance in the triathlon at the Olympic Games in Paris on Wednesday.

Smith finished 48th of the 50 finishers (five athletes failed to finish) at his first Olympics but was left blaming some tactical missteps in the build up to the race, which had been postponed for more than 24 hours as a result of high levels of bacteria in the river Seine.

“I would have liked to have performed better and looking at the data this was probably my worst race in the last two or three years, which is disappointing,” Smith said.

“What I have realised is that it takes a lot more at the Olympics to just run your average race with the nerves, the stress, the added pressure and when you throw in the cancellation it all adds up.

“In hindsight I can try to blame the performance on the delay and there are things looking back that I didn’t take into consideration.

“The big thing was the increase in temperature that we had today, potentially also fuelling as well. If you are racing at 8am you can have a lighter breakfast and take energy gels before the race but maybe a later start you need something more substantial, so I think the combination of that and overheating was where I went wrong and a lot of that was related to the time change.

“I also didn’t sleep well on Monday night as I was so nervous and then you get an e-mail to say the race you have worked the last two years for has been cancelled. So that ends up being two nights of bad sleep and being nervous. There were some mental challenges and lots of lessons learnt.”

Smith left the swim further down the field than he would have liked and struggled on the run but as he crossed the finish line he found time to appreciate his journey.

“On the run almost instantly I was suffering and I just had to hang in there and try to finish,” he said.

“Obviously, it’s not a result I am super pleased with but I’m still pretty proud of myself for getting here and getting through it. Some athletes failed to finish and this level of competition is no joke. Everyone operates at a high level and I’m proud to have got here. It was amazing to see all the Bermudians here and I tried to say hi to as many of them as I could on the last lap as the race was gone by that time.

“When I crossed the line I was really emotional and usually I don’t get that but in hindsight I think I was less emotional about my race and more emotional about the experience and how many people came to watch.

“One of the cool things at this Olympics is as soon as you cross the finish line, you can video call your friends, they set it up through Samsung, and I was able to speak to my five closest friends. That was the highlight of the day.”

Smith is already thinking of the future and is mulling his options as far as triathlon is concerned.

“I hope to back for the next Olympics but four years is a long time and I need to figure out what that pathway looks like and if it is even feasible,” he said.

“It’s a long time to try to support this for another couple of years. I certainly want to carry on with triathlon and I would like to be back at the Olympics but it’s more about if that is possible financially and trying to invest that much into it.

“I will continue with the World Triathlon stuff but the cool thing is that the next Olympic qualification doesn’t start until 2026 so that gives me the opportunity to try long course and Ironman races.

“My entire career has been what can I do to get to the Olympics but I’ve now done that so it’s either what can I do to compete at the next Olympics or try to explore other opportunities in triathlon and more and more you are able to do both.

“You don’t do one of these and say you don’t want to come back but when I finished I knew I had to savour it all as I realised it took so much to get here that there are definitely no guarantees that I will get back to this level.”