PETE Waterfield will tonight start what will almost certainly be his final chance of Olympic glory.

The 31-year-old Southampton-based star is back at the Acquatics Centre competing in the men’s 10m platform individual preliminaries.

Should he qualify for the semi-finals, he will be back in action tomorrow morning with the final scheduled for tomorrow night.

This will be Waterfield’s fourth bid for an individual Olympic medal in the 10m event.

In 2000 at Sydney he failed to advance beyond the prelims, before finishing sixth in the final in Athens four years later.

Carrying an injury, he failed to progress beyond the semis last time out in Beijing.

Waterfield knows first-hand the miniscule margins between success and failure at London 2012 – but he’s adamant he’s learned his lesson ahead of his second bite of the cherry tonight.

Waterfield’s first bite tasted rotten last week as he and golden boy Tom Daley paid the price for an error-strewn fourth dive and ended up in fourth place, having led the competition after two rounds.

In the aftermath of the synchro competition, Waterfield claimed he would rather have finished last that fourth – such was the agony of just missing out on adding to the Athens 2004 synchro silver he won with Leon Taylor.

But all is not lost for Waterfield and Daley as both will compete in the individual 10m platform qualifying competition tonight.

And while Waterfield shouldered the blame for missing out alongside Daley, he believes both have what it takes to reach the medal mix-up – but admits there will be no room for error.

“In this field, you’re in the Olympic Games with the top divers in the world and so you just can’t afford to miss a dive,” Waterfield explained.

“And unfortunately I did that in the synchro competition but hopefully in the individual we can make that up.

“And maybe, with a bit of luck, we can have both of us on there, but we'll see what happens.

“I said I was sorry to Tom after the synchro competition because I felt that it was my fault, but we’ve both put that behind us now and we’re looking forward to the individual.”