China’s Chen Ruolin leads
China’s Chen Ruolin leads the women’s 10m platform diving preliminary at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The Chinese teenage diver now looks to take home yet another gold medal from the diving pool after her earlier win in platform synchro. It is indeed a golden chance for the athlete to defend her individual title at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The top 18 divers of the preliminaries will contest in the semifinal Thursday morning. The final will be held in the evening on the same day.
Chen totalled a score of 392.35 points in the five rounds of preliminary to take her to the top position. The second place in the preliminaries goes to Malaysia’s Pandelela Pamg, who scored 349.00. Germany’s Christin Steuer is at the third position with a score of 341.75. In fact, Steuer came to London as a reserve diver. She got the chance to compete in the 10 meter platform in absence of Nora Subshinski, who withdrew due to a neck injury.
Indeed, Steuer is quite excited to talk about her performance in the event. “When she wasn’t getting better, I just jumped in,” Steuer said. The diver came to know that she would have to compete in the event just hours ahead of its start. “The girls who are here for the first time must be nervous. I’m a bit more mature, that might be why I did a bit better,” the German diver added.
The fourth and fifth places went to the Australians. Brittany Broben, who made 339.80 points and Melissa Wu with 337.90 points are respectively in the positions. The United States’ Katie Bell rallied from 24th place to the ninth after the preliminaries. “I didn’t think I could get back in the game again,” Bell said. “I calmed down a lot after those first two dives. I was able to do my last three dives like I do every day in practice,” she added.
Another U.S diver Brittany Viola ended up the qualification round with the 14th position. After the game, Voila said that she greatly enjoyed the game and it was so cool to make the achievement. Viola’s father Frank, a former MLB MVP cheered up her daughter in her performance. Even if ranked lower in the 18-member squad for the semifinal in the 10m platform diving, the U.S. divers are upbeat of their fate on Thursday morning’s semifinal. Top twelve finishers of the semi’s five dives will make it to the final to be held in the evening.
Anyway, China seems to be clearly in driver’s seat in the diving pool this time also. Apart from Chen’s predicted gold medal in the 10m platform, the county has already grabbed half a dozen of golds in the London Summer Olympics’ diving events. It includes the one from the women’s 10-meter synchro, which was captured by Chen and Wang Hao. However, China’s dream to clinch eight golds was ruined when Russia’s Ilya Zakharov won gold of the men’s 3-meter springboard.
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