The Scotsman

Heatly is aiming to make up for missed medal opportunit­y in individual event

- By GARY HEATLY

Scottish diver James Heatly will be aiming for a medal today in the men’s one metre event at the European Championsh­ips at the Royal Commonweal­th Pool after just being edged out of a podium spot in the mixed team event yesterday. Heatly was left ruing a “few errors here and there” as he and partner Robyn Birch finished fourth representi­ng Great Britain in the opening event of Glasgow 2018 in his home pool.

And now the Scot, pictured, will have to bounce back and be on the button in this morning’s one metre preliminar­y to make sure he progresses to the final later in the day.

This is the event in which he won a bronze medal in April at the Gold Coast Commonweal­th Games.

Yesterday, Edinburgh Diving Club’s Heatly and English athlete Birch ,24, were the pair selected by Great Britain for the straight-to-final event that involved seven pairs on the opening day of the diving programme.

After the first round of dives they were sitting in third place on 91.00 points behind the Russian sand Ukranians.

Heatly’s second dive, this one from the three-metre board, was a good one earning 76.50 points, but Birch’s tenmetre effort only scored 45.00 and they slipped back to sixth after the second round.

They both put in good third dives, Heatly scoring 68.25 points and Birch 62.40.

That put them into second on 343.15 points at that stage behind Russia (349.55), but the Ukraine (355.90) then leapfrogge­d them to win gold and Germany (352.60) picked up the silver.

Heatly, 21, said: “We have not dived as a team a lot, but we are good friends and were excited to be paired together.

“It was a good experience and sets us up well for our individual events to come, but there were a few errors here and there and that really held us back from getting on to the podium.

“We will take some lessons away from this performanc­e.

“In any team event things can change quite quickly and we saw that here with Russia leading most of the way and then being overtaken.

“We were pleased with our last couple of dive sand we knew that they put us in the mix for a medal, but it just was not enough and we are disappoint­ed.”

There will be 26 other divers in the one-metre pre lim alongside Heatly this morning with 12 going through to the final.

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