Liam Pitchford’s Olympic hopes are at an end after a 4-2 defeat to 13th seed Darko Jorgic in the last 32.

The scoreline was the same when the two players met at the same stage in the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, and indeed Slovenia’s Jorgic had won their two meetings on the WTT circuit since then.

But Pitchford would have gone in with optimism that he had the weaponry to turn the tables and book a place in the last 16 against fifth seed Lin Yun-Ju of Chinese Taipei.

The early exchanges gave notice that the optimism was well placed as Pitchford opened up a 5-1 lead and still led at 7-5. However, Jorgic began to tie the British athlete down with his serve, creating openings for a third-ball attack and pulling ahead to take the game 11-9 on his second game point.

The theme of Pitchford struggling on Jorgic’s serve, particularly the backhand, continued in a second game which Jorgic won 11-7 – he had led 10-4 – and into the third as the Slovenia led 5-2 when Pitchford called his timeout.

Despite trailing, Pitchford had probably held the edge in the longer rallies, and the timeout sparked a flurry of attacks which saw him turn a 3-7 deficit into 9-7 lead. Jorgic levelled at 9-9, but Pitchford took the next two points to haul himself back into the match.

A 5-1 deficit in the fourth proved too much to turn around as Pitchford lost that one 11-6, but he then led the fifth 5-1 on his way to taking it 11-5.

At 5-5 in the sixth, Pitchford was in with a chance of taking it to a decider, but three successive points for Jorgic left him with too much to do and he eventually lost out 11-6 as Jorgic completed his 4-2 (11-9, 11-7, 9-11, 11-6, 5-11, 11-6) victory.

Afterwards, Liam said: “Obviously disappointed. I think I played a good enough game to get something out of it, it just wasn’t to be today.

“I think the first set was important. I had a 5-1 lead and 7-5 – I think if I could have taken the first set I’d have put him under a bit more pressure.

“Once he relaxes, he’s difficult to stop, for any player in the world. I had some chances, especially the fifth set, I played really well, and the start of the sixth, there’s a few points I got a little bit unlucky when it was close in the last set and it just slipped away from me a little bit.

“It’s tough to take but I didn’t play a bad match, I gave it my all. I played with what I had today and unfortunately it wasn’t enough – maybe on another day it might have been.”

Jorgic went on to be beaten 4-0 by Lin Yun-Ju in the last 16 on a day which also saw world No 1 and top seed Wang Chuqin of China sensationally beaten in six games in the last 32 by Sweden’s Truls Moregard, the 19th seed.