Just as in the preliminary round, Chinese divers Qiu Bo and Lin Yue finished 1-2 in the semifinals of the men’s platform at the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Qui’s performance was almost a duplicate of prelims, where he scored 563.70 points. His semifinal score of 563.55 points was over 20 points better than his teammate and as the gold medal favorite, he did not disappoint those in attendance.
David Boudia rebounded from a near disastrous prelim where he was the last man in to make the field, moving into finals in third place. Boudia missed his back 2 ½ pike slightly for scores of 7.5 and 8, but other than that his list of dives showed a dramatic improvement from yesterday, upping his score by 92 points as he put himself back into the medal picture.
Also making a huge improvement was British star Tom Daley who finished behind Boudia in fourth. Daley seemed to find a way to calm his nerves and scored 72 more points than in prelims, much to the delight of the crowd.
Nick McCrory, the other American in the field finished in seventh position. His performance was almost routine as he did exactly what he needed to do to make the finals.
Just as in 2008, Olympic gold medalist Matthew Mitcham had a dramatic final dive, but this time it did not win him a gold medal. Conversely, it lost him a place in finals.
Mitcham needed scores of 7.5, 8 and 8 to pass Canada’s Riley McCormick and move into finals; he got 6.5’s.
Mitcham’s readiness had been in question after failing to make the Olympic criteria set by Dive Australia, but was added to the team after petitioning the Australian governing body for the sport of diving.
It appears that their suspicions about his ability to compete in London were well founded. As a result, Australia will not have a representative in the men’s platform final after winning gold a year ago and having two divers make finals.
A second casualty of the semifinals was Russian Gleb Galperin, the 2007 world champion in the event.
Galperin missed an armstand reverse triple for scores of 3.5 and 4, creating a deficit that was too hard too recover from in this very competitive contest. He scored over 90 points on that same dive in prelims, but was well short of vertical in the semifinals.
Overall, the contest itself was very impressive with only three missed dives out of 108! As a result, the divers with the three misses finished in places 14, 15 and 16, and the score needed to the top-12 was almost 45 point higher than prelims.
The quality of the semifinal bodes well for the final, which could be a real battle for the medals. Qiu Bo looks extremely good, but there is quite a bit of parity in this field. Can’t wait for 3:30 pm EST! The finals will be steamed live by NBCOlympics.com.
- Qiu Bo (China) – 563.55
- Lin Yue (China) – 541.80
- David Boudia (United States) – 531.15
- Tom Daley (Great Britain) – 521.10
- Martin Wolfram (Germany) – 519.00
- Victor Minibaev (Russia) – 514.15
- Nick McCrory (United States) – 506.50
- Sascha Klein (Germany) – 503.15
- Jose Guerra (Cuba) – 501.90
- Ivan Garcia (Mexico) – 497.40
- Oleksandr Bondar (Ukraine) – 496.30
- Riley McCormick (Canada) – 495.60
- Matthew Mitcham (Australia) – 482.40
- German Sanchez (Mexico) – 477.30
- Anton Zakharov (Ukraine) – 464.70
- Gleb Galperin (Russia) – 453.80
- Victor Ortega (Colombia) – 439.55
- Jeinkler Aguirre (Cuba) – 436.95
Men’s Olympic Springboard Diving Semifinal Results
Top 12 divers advance to Final Round