The British Gas Diving squad saw three athletes achieve top eight finishes in the women’s 10m Platform and men’s 3m Synchro finals at the FINA World Championships in Rome.
Nicholas Robinson-Baker and Ben Swain were ready to take on the world’s best divers in the 3m Synchro after their impressive performances in the FINA Diving World Series throughout 2009.
The Olympic finalists performed excellently in their preliminary as they beat China and finished in third place overall.
Robinson-Baker and Swain started their final well with good scores on their required dives and they lay in fifth place as the competition moved onto the optional dives.
The British Gas duo began with their Forward 3 ½ Somersault piked and although their entry wasn’t their best they still scored well.
The next dive for the FINA Diving World Series gold medallists was the Inward 3 ½ Somersaults tucked and they achieved good scores as they moved up the leader board to fourth place.
The penultimate dive was the Reverse 2 ½ Somersaults 1 ½ Twists piked and they had a bad start to the dive which lost marks as the synchronisation was lacking through the dive. The divers then moved down to eighth place.
The final dive was performed well and they finished their final in seventh place with a score of 413.46.
“I was quite disappointed with my reverse twist dive,” Robinson-Baker said. “I know I can do that better. It wasn’t our greatest competition and we both know that we can perform better.
“I think we need to go back and work on the ends of our dives a bit more. But it is a pretty good score since this is our first World Championships.
“We scored more here than we did at the Olympics but got the same position so it says that the sport is getting tougher. We are going to continue to work on the same list of dives and maybe work on our individual dives in order to ensure we have better entries. This is where we dropped marks because the synchro is good.”
Olympian Tonia Couch equalled her position in the Olympic final as she took eighth place in the women’s 10m Platform Individual.
Couch performed consistently throughout the rounds of this morning’s semi-final and as she finished in twelfth place she became the first British female individual diver to reach a World Championship final in over 20 years.
The double Olympic finalist started the competition with consistent scores of 7s and as the competition entered the final round Couch lay in sixth place.
She left her best for last and as she emerged from a good entry for her Reverse 2 ½ Somersaults tucked she saw scores of 9s across the board.
Couch finished her competition in eighth place with a final score of 351.00 which was the highest score she has achieved in her career.
“That felt just like the Olympics,” Couch said. “I went into the Olympic final in twelfth place too and I moved up to eighth. I came here aiming to make the semi-finals and score over 320.
“I have exceeded that today. I am really pleased with eighth place. The score was the most important thing and I scored higher than I ever have before.
“The last time I competed outside I finished second or third to last and so I was dreading this event because it was outside but I went into the final with nothing to lose and I knew I wanted to do my final dive well as it is the last time I will be using it.
“The competition venue is great and it was fun out there tonight. The result is just beyond my expectations to still be in the World top eight is just amazing. I really never thought I would come this far.”
