Event four – Dynamic without fins finals

Last night the finals were run for the dynamic without fins event. As previously mentioned there were 23 men and 23 women in the finals with two divers run at a time. The finals were scheduled to occur between 5 and 8 pm. Obviously that was never going to happen since 23 starts requiring a minimum of 10 minutes each does not fit into 3 hours, but no one would commit to any schedule changes prior to our announcements. I announced 127m, the second highest. I really didn’t care too much about what the others did but like to have a high announcement in case of a draw in the results (the higher announced performances wins). I wasn’t very happy to find that my Official Top (start time) would be 8:40pm. This is very late for me. I also had to have a Lepin squeezy prior to my dive to keep my energy up (since dinner was so late), which I’m pretty sure kept me awake until very late last night along with the judges having a good chat on our floor until 1am (there is no sound proofing).

The day dragged and slowly moved from 12 hours to official top until I finally found myself in the pool. I’ve only experienced this once before when I had 12 hours between dives in Aarhus. My static was in the morning and then I had to wait around forever to do my no fins final, which was a pretty miserable performance. Yesterday I did try to move my day slightly, getting up and eating later than usual.

Anyway, my dive felt fine. I was a bit slow taking my final breath (I seem to be packing a lot more than usual, so must focus on doing good big packs) and possibly missed out on a few packs as I dipped my head under at Official Top + 9s (more than 10s is a penalty). I was pretty relaxed and any negative thoughts that popped into my head disappeared as quickly as they came. I came up when I needed to breathe which was 148m (remember this is an Olympic 50m pool, which reduces DNF performance length). I didn’t know I was so close to the wall, but I did know that if I touched the wall I’d win gold. Anyway, I needed to breathe so that was it and I won silver.

Congratulations to Jody from Australia who won gold (150m) and Dajana from Croatia who won bronze (153m with a 5 point (10m) penalty). Also congratulations to the men: Fred from France won gold with 207m, Goran from Croatia silver with 194m and Rune from Denmark bronze with 193m. Kiwi William Trubridge came 4^th with 174m losing his bronze after Rune won his protest. Chris did a massive 161m personal best and ended up 8^th. Guy did not participate in this event.

I have announced much lower for the Dynamic final tonight to try to dive earlier. I’ll be on at 6:20pm. I hope that the low announcement doesn’t turn around and bite me as my competitors have all announced higher. I also wanted to maximise my break between dynamic and static tomorrow morning and actually be able to watch some other people’s performances.

The schedule has now changed to run 4pm – 8pm tonight. Remember that you can watch the live stream on-line at www.europeevolutioncup.com.