Despatie Wins Gold with Highest Score Ever
Men's platform is the most spectacular event in the diving repertory. Now with many more nations fighting for the gold, not just the Chinese, as illustrated by the top spots in the preliminaries—from 1st to 5th athletes from CHN, CAN, GBR, AUS, and MEX were represented.
An added attraction was the high (DD) dives done by non-Chinese divers including 3.8 (DD) an almost unbelievable level of difficulty.
The explosion of high DD dives is more exciting in the platform. Progress in springboard owes much to better technology, with the boards becoming increasingly flexible through the years.
In the platform, improvements depend solely on the diver.
A surprise in the preliminary round was Lian Tian (CHN) missing his first, third and fifth dives, half the program, and was in 6th position, an unusually low one for him.
Jia Hu (CHN) was the clear favorite after this first round where he built up a 10 point lead on Alexandre Despatie (CAN).
In the semi-final, Hu moved further into the lead, adding 212.01 point to his 471.60 from the prelims to hold a more than 20 point lead going into the final.
In the final round Hu corrected a mistake he made in the morning in his armstand dive, 3 somersaults back pike position, and proved that a clean execution makes him virtually unbeatable.
Hu took a risk by including a 3.8 (DD) dive (2.5 back with 2.5 twists) as one of his final dives. He was nervous at trying this one and he missed it badly with poor marks of 4.5-5.5.
This was the moment the other contenders were waiting for. Despatie immediately moved into the lead on the next dive, and then came the clincher. He tried the same dive that Hu missed but he nailed it receiving marks of 9.5-10 from the judges. The total points were a record of 107.1 giving him a 19 point advantage as the silver went to Mathew Helm (AUS).
Despatie was considered the most promising diver even while he competed at the junior level. In Fukuoka he was second in the platform and today becomes Canada's first ever male world champion.
