When the rider immediately ahead of him suffered wheel problems in the men’s 10km scratch race qualifying round, Bermuda’s Conor White quickly found himself out of the running for a place in the final at the Commonwealth Games.

He finished as one of the two last riders in his heat this morning, and was automatically eliminated.

The other rider eliminated was India’s top track cyclist Singh Harshveer Sekhon, who suffered the problem and did not finish the race.

“I wanted to qualify for the final but didn't manage that,” said White, outside the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow. “Usually on these start lists you get some riders that you know probably won't hang in there. For my heat, there was no one that you could see [like that].

“Halfway through it, the guy that was in front of me lost the wheel when I was behind him, and that was it. “We're doing 60km/h for the whole race, once you get out of the draft you’re separated from the rest of the pack. Most of the guys are just trying to get through. So they look back and they see two guys distant, so they really turn on the pace and once they saw that I was just off the back trying to get around the guy from India they really, really turned on the pace.

“Once they got away from me, the gap kind of stayed the same, but they were going just fast enough so I couldn't get back on, which is really annoying.”

White faced a quality field of 13, including two riders from New Zealand, two from Australia, and five from various parts of the British Isles.

“All these guys go to the Olympics and medal,” White said.

On Friday, in the men’s 4,000m individual pursuit, the first of his three races at the Games, he'd aimed for a personal-best time.

“The times that the guys that win do are like two, three seconds off the world record, so they're going pretty quick.

“I didn't quite have the race I wanted. The first half was good and then the pace fell off a bit, which was not ideal, but I still went out there to try to finish as fast as I could.”

The quickest four in the pursuit progressed to the final. White was 18th out of 23 in 4:33.29. The gold medal was won by Australia’s Oliver Bleddyn, a team pursuit Olympic champion, in a new Games record of 4:03.89.

White enjoys time trials, where he has set some of his best times. He said the individual pursuit event is “a really short time trial”. The only other one he has done this year was at the Pan American Championships in Chile.

“It's such a niche discipline. Not many guys do it, and the guys that do do it are fast.

“It's nice to go out and do it and just try and master the discipline, which I'm still far from. But it's probably only my fifteenth month racing track.”

Looking ahead to the men’s 40km points race qualifying round on Sunday morning, he hopes to make more of an impact.

“It won't be like a scratch race. It'll be like sprints throughout, which should do me a bit better. It'll be a bit more stop-starting, not just flat out the whole time.

“It'll be just as hard. And then the points race final, if I make the final, is going to be probably the hardest race I've ever done because at the last Commonwealth Games there was 24 guys that started and nine finished. It's just non-stop on the gas.”

White feels he has come to the Games in good shape, however the quality of the riders he faces means it’s tough going.

“I don't have as much experience as all these guys. I’m probably not as efficient on the track as these guys are.

“I do a bit more work than I should. But that'll come with time. I only have 15 months of experience, but these guys probably have 15 years. It's a great experience either way.”