The Olympic dream of Bermuda's Soling crew of Adam Barboza, Nick Jones and Ray DeSilva was shattered in frustrating fashion in Murcia, Spain, yesterday.

An injury to bowman DeSilva forced the trio to withdraw from the match racing phase of the World Soling Championships after just two of their scheduled 14 round robin races.

Bermuda were competing with seven other countries in the match racing phase for two places in the 10-team Soling event at the Sydney Games. Semi-finals and finals were to follow the round-robin stage on Thursday.

But after DeSilva pulled chest muscles in yesterday's opening race against Finland and struggled through a second race against Canada, the crew decided they had no choice but to withdraw. "It's all over and we're heartbroken,'' said Jones yesterday. "Ray has been to the Olympics before, but Adam and I have been working towards this for two years and we're taking it really hard.'' Jones said DeSilva's injury had made him unable to perform the essential manoeuvre of leaning over the side with his full body weight in the harness to help the boat tip over to one side.

And that had handicapped the crew to such an extent it would have been pointless to continue, Jones added.

"If we had been allowed a coach to come with us, that person could have stepped in as a replacement crew member,'' said Jones.

"But because a replacement had to be a Bermudian and we had no-one else here, we have lost our chance.'' Bermuda were around one boat-length behind the Finns and had already carried out around 15 tacks when DeSilva's injury struck. They eventually lost the race by three lengths.

And Canada took full advantage of DeSilva's plight when they beat the Bermudians by around four lengths.

"We could have tried to carry on, but Ray was only able to sit on the side of the boat and couldn't throw his whole body weight over when we needed him to, so it wouldn't have worked,'' said Jones.

"So we thought to withdraw would be the sporting thing to do.

"It's just a pity we couldn't have had funding to bring someone else, but there was just no money in the BOA (Bermuda Olympic Association) account.

"It's not as if we were a long shot to qualify here. We have got Bermuda to 19th in the world in this event. We had a good chance and we were close.''