Laugher can smile again after bronze follows dark days
DIVING
JACK LAUGHER revealed his three-metre springboard bronze meant ‘redemption’ to him after a hard two years.
The Rio gold and silver medallist has been haunted by the spectre of his final dive at the 2019 world championships when he slipped from gold-medal position to end up with bronze.
He admitted he kept repeating the error with the same back three-and-a-half somersaults dive, leaving him fearful of attempting it.
‘This means everything to me,’ said the 26-year-old from Harrogate. ‘It has been the worst two years of my life.
‘After the 2019 world championships and failing to make myself a world champion, embarrassing myself with my final dive and the mistakes and the failure, it crushed me, it really, really crushed me.
‘It put me in a place that was just terrible, I cried myself to sleep quite a few times, had a lot of sleepless nights because I still make that same mistake.
‘I had no confidence in myself, my anxiety was through the roof and I was physically scared to do the dive. It has been awful and I’ve hated it. I feel like this bronze medal is redemption from what has been such a bad couple of years.’
Laugher finished third as Xie Siyi took top spot, with Chinese compatriot Wang Zongyuan finishing runner-up, and the Briton admitted he had been close to leaving the sport before Tokyo.
‘I wanted to quit this year, quite a few times,’ he added. ‘I was very close. I can’t tell you hard it is going to training every single day being scared of doing a skill because you don’t know where you are.’
But Laugher regained his mojo in May and said: ‘I had a bit of an epiphany after the European Championship and kind of noticed what I was doing wrong.
‘I feel this completes everything for me. I feel I am back again.’
After embarrassing myself with my final dive in 2019, it crushed me, it really did