Youth Olympic Diving: Timothy Lee fails to qualify for 3m springboard final

Story by Ng Enna/Red Sports. Photos by Low Sze Sen/Red Sports and Vanessa Lim/Red Sports

Toa Payoh Swimming Complex, Sunday, August 22, 2010 — Singaporean diver Timothy Lee failed to progress into this evening’s 3-metre Springboard final after finishing last in a pool of 15 young entrants.

The St. Joseph’s Institution student accumulated a score of 365.50 after completing ten dive sets to achieve a new personal best.

“I’ve done better than my warm-up so I’m really happy. I know that I’ve only been diving for 11 months and I am nowhere near their (other competitors) standards so I was just trying my best,” said Timothy.

He began his repertoire with a Forward 1 1/2 somersault and was placed second last with a score of 29.60.

Starting his dive set immediately after world champion diver, Great Britain’s Thomas Daley, Timothy admitted that he was under a bit of pressure.

However, the 16-year-old added, “I tried to focus on my dives and not on how Tom was doing nor his scores.”

The eighth round featured several poor dives, but China’s Qiu Bo was a picture of consistency.

Eight was not a lucky number for Brazil, as history repeated itself today for the South Americans. Pedro Abreu was unable to complete his dive in this round, and landed flat into the water. His compatriot Nicoli Cruz also faced the same fate in her 10m Platform dive yesterday.

The objective of the divers is to enter the water with their body perpendicular to the surface, and they are awarded more points when they create a smaller splash.

In the ninth round, Timothy looked very relaxed, and smiled to the crowd before executing his dive. However, it was a poor one with too much splash.

Oleksandr Bondar from Ukraine, who was placed second behind Qiu, also put on a sub-standard performance in this round, giving the Chinese a comfortable 50.20-point lead.

Qiu maintained his outstanding performance in the final round to top the preliminaries with 618.75 points.

Even though Timothy did not qualify for the final, his coach, Orla Gilmore, was very pleased with his performance.

The 31-year-old retired Scottish diver and winner of multiple European championships shared, “I was looking at the score rather than ranking or anything else. He achieved a new personal best and scored over 80 points more than his previous PB. I set a 370-point target for him and he did just about there. He has learnt a lot and made massive improvements in eleven months.”

Orla has high expectations for Timothy, who only started training for this sport in September last year. She thinks that Timothy can get stronger and tighter. They are looking forward to next year’s South East Asian Games, and will train towards being in medal contention.

The top 12 divers from the preliminary round advanced to this evening’s final, which will take place at 8.30pm. Mexico’s Ivan Garcia, who finished 12th in the preliminary round, will get the final underway.