Olympic Diving Recap: Shocking Men’s Preliminary Results

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Photo Courtesy: Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports

Editorial Coverage Sponsored By FINIS

By Erin Keaveny, Swimming World College Intern

Despite more poor weather conditions and high wind speeds, both Americans qualified for tomorrow morning’s semifinals. Kristian Ipsen is sitting in third place after a consistent performance. He is trailing Mexico’s Rommel Pacheco and China’s Cao Yuan.

Reigning Olympic gold medalist Llya Zakarov from team Russia barely qualified, squeaking into the semifinals in eighteenth place. Zakarov started the meet with an extremely low scoring inward three and a half. The dive was so close he hit his foot on the board, something judges must knock a significant amount of points off the score for. It only earned 42.5 points. The Russian diver also missed his next dive, but was able to perform well enough throughout the rest of the meet to snag the last semifinal spot.

Zakarov was not the only diver who was knocked for being too close to the board. Illya Kasha of Ukraine was also deemed dangerously close on his reverse three and a half. Despite the penalty, he finished in fifteenth.

In another surprising twist, China’s He Chao, who was expected to do very well and even considered a favorite for the gold medal, finished in 21st. He will not be continuing onto semifinals.

Yona Knight-Wisdom, the first Jamaican Olympic diver, will continue his journey after finishing in eleventh place.

The semifinals will take place tomorrow morning at 9:00am, followed by finals at 5:00pm.

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