WATERFIELD AND TAYLOR DELIVER FIRST WORLD MEDAL
Divers Peter Waterfield and Leon Taylor wrote their way into
the history books at the World Championships in Montreal when
they became the first ever Britons to win a medal in the history
of the competition.
The Olympic silver medallists have won podium places at practically
all major international meets but the World Championships
have always eluded them as it has for British Diving as a
whole.
But tonight the pair proved their world class pedigree off
the 10m Platform with a sensational performance to take the
bronze in what was perhaps a higher standard of final, given
the points scores, than the Olympics last summer.
They put behind them the disappointments of yesterday, where
both failed to achieve what they wanted in the individual
event, to put together the type of performance they have been
threatening given the good work undertaken over the past three
weeks of preparation.
After qualifying fifth for the final, with a solid performance
in the morning’s preliminaries, they rose their game
to start well with two impressive routines with the second,
pike dive, that brought them a succession of high scores including
10s.
Taylor and Waterfield were third after two rounds and this
is where they remained as they slowly chipped away at the
leads posted by the eventual silver and gold medallists.
The Russian pairing of Dmitry Dubroskok and Gleb Galperin
hardly put a foot wrong in the entire final to dominate, and
despite the best efforts of Chinese divers Yang Jinghui and
Hu Jia they never faltered to take the gold in 392.88, the
silver went in 374.79 and Britain were just behind with 367.95.
For Waterfield it was only way to console himself following
his individual performance the day before.
“That was certainly a lot better. I was devastated yesterday
and I had to dig deep to find that for tonight but it was
all worth it,” said Waterfield.
“My final dive was still disappointing but after a great
start we’d enough of a lead to keep the medal.
“Overall I’m really pleased with how we performed
and we managed to get that medal we’ve been after for
so long. It could have been even better bar that last dive
but I’ll take the bronze.”
Taylor dived the final round without showing any errors. And
it was a pleasing way for him to finish an injury-plagued
year that hampered the training time the two have shared.
“We came here to win a medal and we’ve done it.
Yesterday was a scary day for us, after the way we performed,
but we came back with a great show tonight,” said Taylor.
“Our start put us well up the field, we’re normally
fifth after the first two dives but today we were third and
not too far back. From there we just kept up producing solid
dives and we knew that would bring us a reward.
“We haven’t been able to train as we would have
liked this year due to injuries and illness and maybe if we’d
had that background we could have done more but it’s
a great end to a difficult year.”
The final day of diving saw the Women’s 3m Synchro pairing
of Tandi Indergaard and Hayley Sage exceed expectations to
finish their final in ninth.
It’s even more of an achievement given the short time
the pair have been together as well as the fact it is Sage’s
first major international meet.
The girls qualified in sixth and performed consistently over
their final five dives to keep in touch with the leaders up
until the final two rounds.
A good inward two-and-a-half put the girls into seventh with
two dives to go but they couldn’t climb any higher and
as the quality of the field came through they more than held
their own to keep hold of ninth place.
Indergaard was delighted with the performance and paid tribute
to her team mate Sage.
“We both really enjoyed that. We only teamed up together
for the first time in February so to come this far so quickly
is pleasing. It’s good to know we ’re here now
and not in two years time with the Olympics just a year away.
Our aim was to make the top 10 so we’ve achieved that.
“Our synchro is our strong point and the jduges’
score reflected that but we have more work to do and need
to look at our individual techniques.”
The British Diving World Championship squad comprises:
Claire Blencowe
City of Sheffield
Tonia Couch
Plymouth Diving
Brooke Graddon
Plymouth Diving
Tandi Indergaard
City of Leeds
Hayley Sage
Beaumont Diving Academy
Louise Van Hoof
Luton Kingfishers
Tony Ally
City of Sheffield
Mark Shipman
City of Sheffield
Ben Swain
City of Sheffield
Leon Taylor
City of Sheffield
Peter Waterfield
Southampton
The 11th FINA World Championships will take place in Montreal,
Canada between 17th and 31st July 2005. The championships
incorporate swimming, diving, open water swimming, synchronised
swimming and water polo.
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