Wilkinson feels ‘comfortable’ competing again
Twenty years after she won her first USA Diving national championship, 2000 Olympic gold medalist Laura Wilkinson hopes to get back into competition mode as she returns to the USA Diving national championships Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio.
Wilkinson, 39, who last competed internationally at the 2008 Olympics and then in the national championships in 2012, will be among 18 competitors in the women’s 10-meter platform, the event at which she won her gold medal 17 years ago in Sydney.
Even though she’s been away from competition for awhile, Wilkinson said she felt comfortable as she prepared for Wednesday afternoon’s round of five dives, to be followed by finals for the top 15 finishers Friday night.
“I remember the environment of competing. It’s a comfortable feeling, a good feeling,” she said. “I need to get some meets under my belt and am trying to get back into competition mode.”
Wilkinson, who began her career as one the top women’s platform divers in USA Diving history with NCAA and national titles in 1997, announced earlier this year she would attempt a comeback with an eye on qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The nationals field in Columbus will not include divers who recently competed in the world championships, including 2016 Olympian Jessica Parratto and 2016 national junior champion Tarrin Gilliland of Liberty Hill. It will, however, include Olivia Rosendahl of Northwestern, who earlier this year captured the NCAA platform title that Wilkinson won in 1997.
Wilkinson’s skill scores in the two meets in which she has competed since announcing her comeback rank third among U.S. platform divers, according to the Dive Meets website. Her combined degree of difficulty is the toughest, which she said could give her a chance for a successful comeback.
“The men’s events have really stepped up. You have to throw huge degrees of difficulty and hit them for 9s and 10s,” she said. “The field in women’s 10-meter is more open. There’s a lot of shuffling.
“The degree of difficulty hasn’t changed and really is not that much different than when I was doing it. It’s not as if they’ve reinvented the wheel since 2008.”
One thing that has changed since her last big meet is that Wilkinson was joined this week in Ohio by her three children. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the wear-and-tear of jumping off a 30foot tower and punching a hole in the water with your hands upon landing.
“I’m feeling good,” she said. “I get worried with every ache and pain, and then I remember that I had the same aches and pains when I was in high school. It’s just part of the sport.”