Springboard, Men

The defending champion Ilya Zakharov of Russia was in Rio hoping for a podium finish. He was the 2012 World Diver of the Year and had won seven gold medals in five European Championships between 2011-15. Another fancied diver was He Chao, the younger brother of the 2008 Olympic champion He Chong. He came to Rio with the one metre springboard 2014 Asian Games gold medal to his credit as well as the 3-metre gold he won at the 2015 World Championships at Kazan. At the Worlds he beat the reigning Olympic champion Zakharov into second place and was voted the FINA Male Diver of the Year for 2015.

A silver medallist in the 2016 Rio World Cup event, Yona Knight-Wisdom made history as the first Jamaican diver to compete at the Olympics. Although he was born and lived in Leeds, England, he had a Jamaican father and Barbadian mother but chose his father’s country to represent because he could not break into the British team. Standing 190cm and weighing 90kg, Knight-Wisdom was rather large for a diver.

The first preliminary round took place in a mixture of weather conditions ranging from baking hot to freezing cold, and exceedingly strong winds in the outdoor pool. It was the wind that was to play its part in one of the biggest shocks of the Rio diving competition with the elimination of World Champion He Chao. A disastrous third dive that was affected by the wind resulted in him scoring just 27.75 points and, despite a brilliant 91.00 with his next dive, he could not salvage his Games and was eliminated. It was his fellow countryman Cao Yuan, however, who dived third and set the benchmark with a six-dive total of 498.70. It was not until the 27th man out of 29 took to the board that Yuan’s lead was challenged, when Mexico’s Rommel Pacheco put in the best dive of the day for a 96.90, and a total of 488.25 put him in second place with Kristian Ipsen of the United States in third. The Jamaican Yona Knight-Wisdom qualified in 11th place. The defending champion Zakharov qualified in 18th and denied Britain’s Freddie Woodward a place in the semi-final. Ahmad Amsyar Azman of Malaysia finished 29th, and last, in the preliminaries but it may well have been different if his sixth and final dive had not resulted in him belly-flopping into the pool and scoring just 9.75.

Cao Yuan of China, Pacheco and Russia’s Yevgeny Kuznetsov topped the semi-final qualifiers with Cao nearly 20 points clear. Zakharov crashed out after finishing in 18th and last place after his fourth dive, when he entered the water on all fours and failed to score. Despite three bad dives in the semi-final, Britain’s synchronised gold medallist Jack Laugher qualified in 12th and last place. Consequently, he was first to dive in the final. But what a difference a few hours made, as he had three dives in excess of 90 points for a tally of 523.85 that was there for all to beat. It was a long and anxious wait for the Briton as he waited for diver-after-diver to overtake him. After 11 men had dived the nearest anyone got to him was Patrick Hausding, the German outsider who produced a stunning fifth dive that yielded the highest score of the final, 98.80, but he was still nearly 25 points behind Laugher. There remained just one man to dive, the leading qualifier and London 2012 10-metres synchronised gold medallist Cao Yuan. Laugher had been trailing Yuan after each round and the Chinese diver needed 73.20 to take gold and, as his worst dive so far had been 85.00, it was unconceivable that he would lose. He saved his best for last and his 96.90 matched Laugher’s fifth dive and he beat the Briton by nearly 24 points .