DALEY AND ALDRIDGE TAKE SECOND SILVER FOR BRITISH CONTINGENT
The new pairing of Thomas Daley and Blake Aldridge continued
to excel as they claimed the first of two medals for the Brits
at the FINA Diving Grand Prix in Madrid.
Daley (Plymouth) and Aldridge (Southampton) were competing
against some of the world's best divers in the men's Platform
Synchro. They were up against the Chinese pairing, the German
team the Russians and the Canadians.
The Chinese pair, Liguang Yang and Hao Zhang, looked strong
throughout the early rounds and put the gold out of touch
in the fourth round with their impressive inward 3 ½
tuck (407C). They took the top spot with 460.68 points.
The Brits lay in third place just behind the German team
of Norman Becker and Johanes Donay until the fourth round
when they performed their inward 3 ½ tuck (307C) and
scored highly. The Germans dropped marks in the fourth round
to let the British team move into second place.
Daley (13) and Aldridge (25) continued to perform consistently
and secured the silver medal with 417.93 points. Bronze went
to the Germans in 394.32 points.
"That was a pretty good score for us," Aldridge
said. "It is not the best we have performed but we were
getting excellent marks on our synchronisation. It was a steady
competition for us and we scored above 400 which was our aim.
"We did a great back 3 ½ [207C] which secured
the silver and was a really important part of the event for
us. I believe we pushed the Chinese on today, we knew we couldn't
catch them but they knew we were close to them."
The second medal of the day came in the men's 3m Springboard
event with Nicholas Robinson-Baker and Ben Swain claiming
bronze in a tightly fought final.
The Chinese pairing dominated this event from the first round
and put gold out of touch of the others in the fourth round
with their forward 2 ½ somersaults, 2 twists (5154B)
and took the number one place with a final score of 415.56.
The British pairing performed consistently throughout the
rounds to take high scores from their first three dives. They
performed their reverse 2 ½ somersaults, 1 ½
twists (5353B) in the fifth round and went into second place
above the Ukrainian pair. But the Brits scored slightly lower
in the final round to give the silver to the Ukranian pairing
of Dmytro Lysenko and Anton Zakharov; who finished with a
score of 408.21.
Robinson-Baker and Swain finished the competition with a
final score of 407.01 to take the bronze - just eight points
behind the Chinese champions.
"We did exactly what we needed to do today," Robinson-Baker
said. "We were following the Spanish pair and the home-crowd
support was amazing but we kept our heads and we knew we had
to dive well under pressure. We got over 400 which is an important
target for us in all international competitions."
"We got an amazing score at nationals earlier this month
and we knew we had to keep up with that," Swain said.
"It was tougher than I thought to match the score at
nationals but we found the crowd noise spurred us on and got
our adrenaline pumping. We were very relaxed on pool-side
and this kept our minds on track for what we needed to achieve
and it was great to claim a medal here."
The women's 3m Springboard preliminaries saw Jodie McGroarty
(City of Sheffield) perform well but fail to proceed through
to the next rounds. She finished 15th with a promising score
of 247.30.
Louise Van Hoof (Southampton) made it into the semi-finals
with an impressive score of 261.05 in the preliminaries. She
performed consistently in the semis but finished fifth with
an impressive score of 266.40 and failed to make it to the
final.
The men's Platform preliminaries saw Peter Waterfield (Southampton)
and Thomas Daley (Plymouth) competing against Olympic medallists
for a place in the semi-final.
The 13-year-old showed his strength with strong dives throughout
the rounds to take the second spot with 469.05. Daley finished
just behind the Chinese Olympic champion Jia Hu, who scored
501.40.
Waterfield, who scored 430.30, took the fourth place behind
China's Liguang Yang - who finished third with 436.25. Both
British athletes go into the final day of competition hungry
to claim more medals for Britain.
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