Last week's announcement of the Great Britain team to contest the final Olympic qualifier in Turkey later this month meant heartbreak for some boxers who had made London 2012 the summit of their ambitions.
For those who missed out on selection, there is now no chance of pulling on a GB vest at their home Games, and in the majority of cases it will inevitably clear a path to the professional ranks.
The names of some of those who have missed out are surprising, given that less than a year ago the likes of Khalid Yafai, Bradley Saunders and Iain Weaver would have been first on the squad list.
But others have timed their runs to perfection and Andrew Selby's remarkable resurrection from a fading fighter into the European champion meant the world-level Yafai was nudged out in a flyweight category of remarkable quality.
Saunders was a former world medallist who went to the Beijing Olympics and was held up for a long time as not just part of 2012 but one of our best medal prospects. But Fred Evans surged past him and grabbed the one available slot at the weight.
It was Weaver's immense misfortune that he should find himself first in the same division as the imperious Luke Campbell, then, at featherweight, apparently battling Martin Ward for selection.
For a long time, members of the Great Britain team had been privately telling visitors that the fast-rising Ward was one of the squad's standout talents, and all the signs were he would peak at 2012.
But he lapsed at just the wrong time, meaning the English featherweight berth for the final qualifier went not to him nor Weaver, but to development squad boxer Sam Maxwell, who timed his form to perfection.
At heavyweight, anybody who witnessed Simon Vallily bludgeon a succession of opponents en route to Commonwealth Games gold in Delhi in 2010 will have been convinced GB had unearthed a headline act for 2012.
In fact, the quality of Vallily's opponents in Delhi was subsequently shown up by a string of defeats suffered by the Middlesbrough man against middle-ranking continental opposition.
The last chance at heavyweight has been handed - more out of hope than expectation, given there is only one European qualifying place up for grabs - to Warren Baister, who until recently was the third-ranking Briton at the weight.
Scarborough's Danny Price missed his chance and turned professional under Frank Maloney, a route already followed by Saunders and his former 69kg rival Scott Cardle, who has signed with Eddie Hearn's Matchroom.
Yafai, Vallily and Ward are almost certain to follow suit, with few, understandably, seeing the benefit of four more years of hard slog towards Rio 2016, especially when a lapse in form at the wrong time could cost them dear at the end of it.
On the other hand, the amateur option is certainly more favourable than ever before, with a set wage and a full-time schedule in return for continuing to hit their performance targets.
Set against a future in the professional game where only an increasingly select few win the big-money gamble and the rest are forced to pick up a pittance for sporadic dates away from the TV lights, it does not seem so bad.
It means that Charlie Edwards, for example, who is going to the final qualifier but will always be up against it at the tough light-flyweight limit, may be one of the few who still has Rio on his mind.
Great Britain head coach Rob McCracken called the decisions he had to make to pick the final squad some of the hardest of his illustrious career.
The fighters he was forced to discard face equally tough choices ahead.
