RACHELLE SIMPSON TAKES WOMEN’S HIGH DIVING WORLD TITLE

The women’s 20m high diving event concluded at the 16th FINA World Championships in Kazan. Nine female athletes representing six countries competed for medals in the final.

The event promised to be really thrilling due to the participation of all the three Barcelona 2013 medallists: Cesilie Carlton (gold) and Ginger Huber (silver) of the Unites States and Anna Bader (bronze) of Germany. Unlike other participating countries that entered one participant each, the US national team fielded four athletes at once, thus increasing their chances of winning medals. Ukrainian high diver Diana Tomilina, who was also intending to participate in the final, eventually withdrew from the tournament due to a knee injury she had sustained earlier during a training session. Therefore, only nine finalists participated in the final, instead of ten.

Combination jumps, somersaults, arm stand – the girls demonstrated a jaw-dropping programme of stunts which was hardly surprising considering that most of them are professional acrobats. A dive with the highest degree of difficulty (4.0) was performed by Mexican high diver Adriana Jimenez who never ceases to amaze the audience with her amazing stunts. However, it’s not the only judging criterion, as judges also assess the takeoff, flight and entry into the water.

After the first round Lysanne Richard showed the best result whereas Ginger Huber was second, just three points behind the first place. German high diver Anna Bader ended up in the third position. During the second round Lysanne Richard failed to perform a complete somersault and her entry with splash definitely lowered her odds of winning. Besides her dive was not that difficult hence giving her opponents quite good chances for victory. Anyway, Rachelle Simpson (USA), Cesilie Carlton (USA), Yana Nestsiarava (BLR) took the top three places before the final dive which was going to be decisive. Nestsiarava‘s last attempt showed that she was good at distributing her strength properly. Carlton was nervous and it was agonising for her to wait for the score to flash on the board, but 91.65 points were worth the wait. The last dive was executed by Rachelle Simpson who eventually won the tournament and, surely, congratulated her compatriot Carlton on silver. Persistent Yana Nestsiarava from Belarus settled for bronze medal.

FINA Worlds 2015. High diving.

Women. 20m platform

1. Rachelle SIMPSON (USA) – 258.70

2. Cesilie CARLTON (USA) – 237.35

3. Yana NESTSIARAVA (BLR) – 233.10

From : Kazanka2015.com