AUSSIE STAR TO PUT FRESH SPIN ON INCREDIBLE YEAR
IT’S going to be pretty hard for Maddison Keeney to top the year she’s had after her breakthrough world championship win.
But if there’s anything that could be better than the gold medal she won on the 1m springboard in Budapest in July, it would be gold at a home Commonwealth Games next April.
Keeney is set to be one of the stars of the Gold Coast Games in the diving pool where she hopes to tackle the individual 1m and 3m springboard, as well as the 3m synchronised event.
“I think (it would be hard to top) but I’m always looking to improve and finish it off,” said Keeney, who will compete in the 3m synchronised event with Anabelle Smith at the FINA diving Grand Prix at the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre.
The pair compete on Sunday on a board Keeney regards as her specialty despite her 1m success at the world championships.
“Definitely 3m (is my focus) because 1m is not an Olympic event,” Keeney said.
“It’s just something I do and I think it’s good to be good at 1m because it improves my 3m also.”
While she said her world championship gold was “not really a surprise”, Keeney hopes the result will help her improve on the higher springboard ahead of next April’s Games.
“(The world championship result) is something that I’ve been working on for a long time because I’ve been training a lot harder dives than all the other women,” she said.
“It’s something that I’ve been really wanting to do.”
In action from the Grand Prix yesterday, Australia’s AnnaRose Keating and Brittany O’Brien both topped their semi-finals in the women’s 10m platform event to put them in good positions for medals this weekend.
Teenager Keating upstaged two-time Olympic medallist and 2010 Commonwealth Games gold medallist, Pandelela Rinong, in her semi-final, the Victorian finishing with a score of 297.10 ahead of the Malaysian’s 295.20.
O’Brien finished her semifinal with a score of 284.25, with Canada’s Celina Toth second on 267.45.