China, Canada lead way into diving finals
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
BEIJING, Aug 19 (AFP): Chinese world number one He Chong kept his gold medal chances on track Tuesday, taking a comfortable lead into the final of the men's 3m springboard.
World champion and team-mate Qin Kai was third in the semi-finals as China look to continue their domination of the diving after winning five-out-of-five golds in the competition so far.
Canada's Alexandre Despatie, a silver medallist in the event in Athens, finished second to also qualify, storming back in the semi-finals after finishing a lowly ninth in the preliminaries.
He, who is known for pulling off difficult dives, finished with 547.25 points, 28.50 points ahead of Despatie with Qin 38.75 points behind his teammate on 508.50.
He, 21, performed one of the toughest dives of the semis, pulling off a forward two- and-a-half sommersault with three twists in a pike position to earn 102.60 points from the judges.
Despatie said he tried to just shrug off his Monday's poor performance in his attempt to win gold.
"My point was to forget about what happened in the prelims and I did. I came in this morning and it's a brand new day, and I felt better and mentally I felt much better than I did yesterday," Despatie said.
"I came back to priorities and what to think about at the right moment and it seems to be working out better for me," said Despatie, who made Commonwealth Games history as the competition's youngest gold medal winner at Kuala Lumpur in 1998 aged just 13.
World champion and team-mate Qin Kai was third in the semi-finals as China look to continue their domination of the diving after winning five-out-of-five golds in the competition so far.
Canada's Alexandre Despatie, a silver medallist in the event in Athens, finished second to also qualify, storming back in the semi-finals after finishing a lowly ninth in the preliminaries.
He, who is known for pulling off difficult dives, finished with 547.25 points, 28.50 points ahead of Despatie with Qin 38.75 points behind his teammate on 508.50.
He, 21, performed one of the toughest dives of the semis, pulling off a forward two- and-a-half sommersault with three twists in a pike position to earn 102.60 points from the judges.
Despatie said he tried to just shrug off his Monday's poor performance in his attempt to win gold.
"My point was to forget about what happened in the prelims and I did. I came in this morning and it's a brand new day, and I felt better and mentally I felt much better than I did yesterday," Despatie said.
"I came back to priorities and what to think about at the right moment and it seems to be working out better for me," said Despatie, who made Commonwealth Games history as the competition's youngest gold medal winner at Kuala Lumpur in 1998 aged just 13.