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FINA WC Day 4 - Women's 10m Platform Report

Jul 16, 2003

The women's platform started with the morning preliminaries as 38 divers fought more the windy condition than each other.

Yesterday's high standard in the men's springboard created high expectations for this women's event.

But the wind got even stronger during the day and affected everyone's performance. Nothing is worse than the wind, even strong rain is better. The wind changes how everyone performs and quality suffers the most.

The usually confident Chinese divers Lishi Lao and Na Li were visibly upset and didn't not perform as they did during the synchro event.

After the prelims the Chinese moved into the lead during the semi-finals, ahead of Loudy Tourky (AUS) and Lynda Dackiw (AUS) dropping to third and fourth. Na Li put on a "classic" performance worth 205.47 for the four dives in the semi-finals.

Emilie Heymans (CAN) performance during the semis was so good that it moved her from 8th in the prelims to 4th putting her 12 points behind the Chinese.

The windy condition took the usual advantage Chinese divers have in executing their near perfect performance and gave everyone else a chance at better marks.

Lishi Lao and Emilie Heymans surprised the spectators with very difficult free programs. What was once the exclusive domain of the Chinese has now been adopted by Heymans. A dive like 2.5 back with 1.5 twist or an armstand back with 3 sommersaults would only by attempted by Lao, and is usually the exclusive domain of male divers. But today Lao could not execute these very difficult dives, receiving only 7-7.5s and it cost her the gold.

Heymans clinched the gold in her final dive where she got 9-10s for a total of 95.88 to edge out Lao by two points. It was her first ever medal outside of the Olympics and only the second Canadian gold at a Worlds.