Shot putter Wictor Petersson had ambitions of adding a world indoor medal to the silver he earned at the European indoor championships in Apeldoorn, Netherlands earlier this month.
After two throws, the Swede was sitting in bronze medal position once more after a throw of 20.73m, behind Americans Adrian Piperi and Roger Steen.
But a 20.24m throw in the third round followed by two fouls meant he failed to improve and slipped down to sixth going into the final throw.
He saved his best until last, but 20.87m was not enough to move further up the leaderboard.
New Zealand's Tom Walsh took gold with a best throw of 21.65m, three centimetres further than Steen, while Piperi took bronze with 21.48m.
On the track, Samuel Pihlstrom was in search of a first major global medal in the final of the men's 1500m.
The 24-year-old took up position in the middle of the pack, before being passed by Norwegian star Jacob Ingebrigtsen.
At 600m, he was at the back and looked at risk of being cut adrift.
But as Ingebritsen picked up the pace in the final 600m, Pihlstrom maintained his speed and began to pick off the strugglers one by one, and still had an outside chance of a medal when they took the bell.
However, he did not have enough to make a move down the outside, finishing in fifth place in a time of 3:39.67, three places higher than he managed in this event last year.
That was less than a second down on the Norwegian, who took his second gold medal of the weekend in 3:38.79, ahead of Great Britain's Neil Gourley and the United States' Luke Houser, who took silver and bronze, respectively.