Hartley and Abel qualify for semifinals on three-metre at Olympic Games
Written by sport on August 15th, 2008 in sport.
Hartley and Abel qualify for semifinals on three-metre at Olympic Games
BEIJING – Blythe Hartley of North Vancouver and Jennifer Abel of Laval, Que., placed third and 10th respectively on Friday in the women’s three-metre springboard preliminaries to advance to the semifinals in diving action at the Olympic Games.
Olympic champion Gao Jingjing of China and Russian Julia Pakhalina, qualified first and second respectively earning 373.90 and 358.15 points but were not perfect both posting subpar scores on one of their dives.
Hartley had a great start to the competition and led the field after her opening two dives. Her marks ranged from 8.5 to 9.5 for her inward two and half and forward three and a half. She was solid on her next two dives but dropped to third. Her lowest score was on her final forward twisting dive but in the end it didn’t affect her ranking as she finished with 350.60 points.
“I was incredibly nervous in the morning and leading up to the competition,” said Hartley, 26, competing at her third Games. “I was really nervous and I didn’t really know why, so the first step is qualifying and making the top 18 and (Saturday) is a brand new day. Now we all start at zero. What happened today is good but I’m going to leave it behind me.”
Abel, 16, blew her back two and half in the third round but rebounded with her best scores on her reverse dive in the next round and cracked the top-10 with 300.75 points. The Olympic rookie dove right after Gao but that didn’t bother her.
‘’ I was not intimidated by the crowd and I liked the way I came back after the third dive,’’ she said. ‘’I felt like, well, I missed it, it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do about it now and came back in force. My objective was to make the semifinal, now that I have reached it, I have to find another one. I am really happy about my performance today.”
The semifinals are on Saturday. The top-12 will advance to Sunday’s final.
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Canadian Sport News/Nouvelles-sport canadien
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