London high as Traisy earns ticket to Olympic Games

PETALING JAYA: Youngster Traisy Vivien Tukiet gave herself a perfect belated birthday gift by securing a place in the semi-finals of the women’s individual 10m platform at the FINA Diving World Cup in London on Monday.

Traisy chalked up 282.75 points at the end of the five-dive discipline to finish 16th in the preliminaries – and earn an Olympic Games debut in August.

The top 18 divers at the meet advanced to the semi-finals and, more importantly, secure quota spots for their respective countries.

Reigning Commonwealth Games champion Pandelela Rinong did just enough to qualify for the semi-finals in 11th spot with 305.15 points, just ahead of China’s Hu Yadan (303.60).

Reigning Olympic and world champion Chen Ruolin of China topped the 40-diver field with 403.45 points.

Pandelela qualified early for the Olympics after finishing fifth at the World Championships in Shanghai last year and Traisy’s success means that the country has won the maximum two spots for women’s platform diving at the Olympics.

Traisy, who just turned 18 last Friday, should also be proud of the fact that she is going to be the youngest athlete in the Malaysian contingent bound for London.

Traisy was happy to join her Sarawakian teammate Pandelela at the Olympics.

“The coach (Yang Zhuliang) said there was to be another jump-off later this week as some countries have already secured two spots and there are two or three tickets still available,” said Traisy, who bagged her first SEA Games gold medal in Indonesia last year by partnering Leong Mun Yee to win the women’s synchro 10m platform event.

“But I do not want to take that chance. I came close to qualifying for the Olympics at the world meet last year and it motivated me to do it in this final qualifying meet.”