Australian divers Maddi Keeney and Anabelle Smith missed out on a medal in heartbreaking circumstances at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games after slipping off the board on their final dive.
Heading into the fifth and final round of the Women’s Synchronised 3m Springboard Final, the Australians were in third place, only 0.84 points behind American duo Kassidy Cook and Sarah Bacon, who were in the silver medal position.
However, Anabelle's unfortunate slip on take-off for the difficult dive (forward 2½ somersaults with 1 twist) sent her off course. She did remarkably well to complete the dive, but it cost the Australians points, and their final dive score of 48.60 dropped them to fifth place.
A disappointed Anabelle said she let her emotions out in the pool immediately.
“I screamed underwater,” she said. “I was hoping the cameras weren’t on the underwater cam right there.
“I think it'll take some time to sink in. I feel bad for letting the team down. I'm fine with myself, but you don't want to let someone down in the process.
“Unfortunately, that is sport, and it just happened today on the big stage.”
Maddi said she was unaware of the mistake until they exited the pool.
“I could kind of see her when I did the end of my dive, but I didn’t see how 'mayday' it was,” she said.
Maddi said that despite the disappointment, they were happy to have made it back to the Olympics together after winning the bronze medal at Rio 2016.
"We've been travelling all over the world this year for competitions." It's been so amazing,” Maddi said.
“I was happy how we came into the competition. There's nothing more we could have done.”
After sitting fifth after two rounds, Maddi and Anabelle put the competition on notice with their third dive. Their inward two-and-a-half somersault pike scored 73.80, the second-highest score of the round, to vault them up into the bronze medal position.
Their fourth dive further closed the gap to Cook and Bacon, with a forward three-and-a-half somersault pike scoring the second-best total of the round once again with a score of 74.40.
This sent the large Australian contingent at the Paris Aquatics Centre into raptures, with loud chants of ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi’ echoing through the arena. Unfortunately, they couldn’t maintain their charge up the leaderboard.
The Chinese pair Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen dominated from start to finish to claim China’s sixth consecutive gold in the event with a total score of 337.68 points. The USA held on for the silver with 314.64 and Great Britain’s Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen were surprised and thrilled to claim Britain’s first-ever medal in the event at the Olympics (302.28).
Maddi will now regroup for the Women’s 3m Springboard competition, which begins 7 August at 11pm AEST.
The next Aussie divers to compete are Dom Bedggood and Cassiel Rousseau in the Men’s Synchronised 10M Platform Final on Monday, July 29, at 7pm AEST.
This article was originally written for The Australian Olympic Team. You can read the published version here
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