(dpa) - Serbia was celebrating its swimmer Milorad Cavic's Olympic silver in 100 metres butterfly on Sunday, but lamented the use of electronic timing equipment which gave victory to American Michael Phelps by one-hundredth of a second.
"A sensor left Cavic without gold," a headline in the daily Blic said, while tabloid newspaper Press bluntly claimed: "Cavic was robbed of the gold."
"Michael Phelps defeated Cavic though the video of the race showed otherwise," Press wrote. "After their complaint was overruled, our Olympians calmly swallowed the injustice."
However Cavic accepted that Phelps had simply finished stronger.
"I would not have lodged the protest," he said.
And former Russian champion swimmer Alexander Popov, a winner of nine Olympic medals in 1992 and 1996, asked Serbian reporters in Beijing to tell Cavic: "the sensor is not a woman, it needs to be hit."
"I should not have cut my nails," Cavic joked after the race, saying he was "happy but likely to have some regrets over the race for years to come".