Ilya’s high-risked dives leave the Chinese aghast
IT WAS a case of who-dareswins in the men’s threemetre springboard diving on Tuesday, and a cautious Qin Kai was left thunderstruck after Russia’s Ilya Zakharov rolled the dice to snatch gold from the Chinese favourite on his very last dive.
Qin Kai, who opted for safety on his last dive, watched aghast as 21year-old Zakharov nailed a forward 4½ somersault dive in a tuck position, one of the tougher dives in competition with a degree of difficulty of 3.8.
The Russian had prefaced that with a forward2½ somersault with three twists in the pike position with a degree of difficulty of 3.9 that earned him 99.45 points for his penultimate dive.
“Who would have thought he would dive so well?” Qin Kai, who took bronze in the event at Beijing, asked softly.
Zakharov’s high-risk, highreward strategy denied China their sixth straight gold at the Aquatics Centre and blew the team’s ambitions of sweeping all eight diving titles out of the water.
The 26-year-old Qin Kai was left slumping up against a wall behind the diving platform with a towel over his head.
The five-time world champion smiled weakly at the crowd as he fingered his silver medal, while his team-mate He Chong, who won gold in the event at Beijing, grimly stood in the bronze medal podium spot.
Red-eyed and ashen-faced, Qin Kai was as puzzled with the boil over as the huge pack of chinese journalists awaiting him when he emerged to answer questions.
“Of course, last time I came third, this time I had the chance and I just feel like I didn’t help China get the gold,” Qin Kai said. “I just feel heartbroken.”
Signs that not everything was ship-shape with Qin Kai emerged in qualifying on Monday when he produced a terrible dive, after stepping off the board wrong, over-rotating and entering the water diagonally. That gave him a score of just 39.90, less than half of what he would normally expect.
There was no repeat in the semifinal earlier on Tuesday when Qin Kai, who already took a gold in the three-metre synchronised gold springboard with Luo Yutong, qualified third for the final.
The Chinese, however, failed to impress with low-risk dives on his first and last shots and failed to set the pool alight on those in-between in the final.
His team-mate He Chong led qualifying into the final but was also left to scramble to make up for a slow start.
“Actually, my level of difficulty was higher than my last Games,” Qin Kai said, defending his choice of dives.
“The more difficult it is, the more risky, so ... Anyway, I just didn’t expect he would dive so well.”