By just 0.4 seconds

“It didn’t go right, it didn’t happen the way I wanted it to happen.

“So I got caught in the second pack. I got hit a few times, I became disorientated and had no idea where I was going and had to work pretty hard to get back up to the position that I normally like to be in.

“There seemed to be a lot of fighting, but I don’t think any of it was intentional.

“I’ve never really been in a pack before, and maybe it’s like that all the time.

“But for me it felt a little bit violent.”

Payne has been stung from head to toe by jellyfish off Melbourne, got a black eye in the Hudson, swam past a dead dog in China and was on the wrong side of the shark nets off Hong Kong. But this was human aggression and she felt it affected her performance.

“Yes, potentially. It took a lot energy out of me, a lot more than I would have liked. That’s why I like to lead, so that I don’t have to get involved with the fighting, especially going around the buoys, which take a lot out of you.

“I’m not really a fighter, I’m a lover, I guess, and I struggled in the pack with all the fighting that happened.

“I tried to deal with it the best I could, but it took a lot of energy out of me.

“It just seemed to be a pretty violent race right from the start.

“But open water swimming’s about who makes the right decisions at the right time, and it didn’t quite go my way today.

“I tried my absolute best, trained so hard, and fourth in the world isn’t too bad.”