DIVING: Australian divers James Connor and Dominic Bedggood have qualified in 9th and 17th respectively for the men's 10m platform semi-final after the preliminary round at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio.
Whilst Connor was consistently in the required top 18 for each of his six dives, Bedggood was ranked 20th heading into his last dive and responded to the pressure nailing his back twist final dive for a score of 88.4 to secure his place in the semi-final.
“Consistency is key in this game, especially in the prelims when there are slow rounds and a lot of numbers and a lot of time in between dives,” said Connor.
“I don’t really follow how everyone else is diving, for me it is kind of like golf scores - pars, birdies and bogies and we were just looking for six pars today and we kind of had nice little eagles at the end so we will take that for sure."
“After the fourth round I had my head down and then I just kicked myself and said ‘the fight is not over, you still have two rounds to come back and anything can happen in diving’,” said Bedggood.
“My coaches just told me to calm my emotions take each dive one at a time and trust my training, I did and the result was good.
“Back twist is my favourite and most consistent dive. I knew it needed to be one of my better ones and standing up there I was just thinking about training and knowing that I can do this dive so it was just a matter of confidence at that time."
Both Australian’s were not surprised by the quality of the field and diving and expect things to heat up even more in tomorrow’s semi and final.
“There are some incredible divers diving right now,” said Connor. Tom Daly (GBR) is giving the Chinese a run for his money, which is not surprising at all and there is no tapering, there is no one that goes out in the prelims thinking I will just hit five dives and tank the last one, everyone is diving their six dives as best they can and hoping to that in the semi-final and final,” said Connor.
“We are going to have to step it up for the semi-final tomorrow, we are hoping to progress but it might take something special”.
When asked if Daly was the one to beat, Bedggood indicated he deserved to be the favourite but would not let this distract him.
“He is an amazing diver,” said Bedggood. “That performance in the preliminaries was incredible, he is definitely the one to beat but at this point in time I just focus on my own dives and take it each round at a time and hopefully I can put together a list that I know I can and perform well and make the final.
The semi-final will be held at 11am tomorrow local time, with the final involving the top 12 competitors from the semi-final at 4:30pm local time.
Jo Banningolympics.com.au
Source of article : http://rio2016.olympics.com.au/news/connor-and-bedggood-dive-into-semi
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