"After the Games I convinced myself that I had no talent and that I was never going to win again. I didn't want anything to do with swimming.” On New Year's Eve 1984, Moorhouse stayed home alone to reflect and decided to train for a competition in April 1985 as a 'last roll of the dice' to see whether he had what it took to conquer the world. His decision was vindicated when he broke the World Short Course (25 m pool) record for the 100 m in a time of 1:00.58, and went on to win the European Championships gold medal in Bulgaria in a time of 1:02.99. The year 1986 was a bittersweet one for Moorhouse. At the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, he narrowly took silver in the 100m breaststroke behind long-time rival Victor Davis of Canada. However, he put his disappointment behind him to turn the tables on Davis in the 200m breaststroke a few days later, an event in which the Canadian had been heavily favoured as the reigning Olympic Champion and world record holder. Overtaking Davis in the second half of the race, Moorhouse took gold in a personal best and new English record of 2:16.35. A month later in Madrid, Moorhouse qualified fastest for the 100m breaststroke final at the World Championships in a new European record of 1:02.28. In the final, he powered to the front in the second 50m to beat Victor Davis convincingly and win the race in another European record of 1:02.01. However, he was then controversially disqualified for an alleged dolphin kick at the turn, promoting Davis to gold. (FINA, swimming's world governing body, changed the breaststroke rules in 2005 to permit a single dolphin kick at the start and turn in recognition of the fact that this is often an unintended and involuntary reaction to the underwater pullout.) Despite his natural disappointment, though, Moorhouse finished the year ranked first in the world for the 100m breaststroke for the first time, a position he retained for the next four years. In 1987, putting the Madrid episode behind him, Moorhouse set a world short-course record, in a competition in Bonn, by becoming the first person to swim 100 m breaststroke in less than a minute, out-swimming the former world record holder, Rolf Beab in a time of 59.75 s. Later that year, at the European Championships in Strasbourg, Moorhouse retained