Alexandre Despatie leads after semis on three-metre at world championships

July 22nd, 2009

Alexandre Despatie

ROME – Two-time Olympic diving medallist Alexandre Despatie of Laval, Que., stands in first place after the semifinals on men’s three-metre springboard Wednesday at the world aquatic championships.

Despatie, a three-time world champion, totalled 485.05 points to place ahead of Chong He of China in second at 483.30 and Troy Dumais of the U.S., in third at 471.50. Reuben Ross of Regina also advanced to Thursday’s final placing ninth.

“I’m very satisfied,” said Despatie, in second place after the morning preliminaries. “It was a long day with prelims and semis and it took a lot of energy to perform well. I was pleased with how I rebounded from a major mistake on my third dive. I didn’t lose patience and came back to finish with three strong dives.”

In 2009, Despatie only competed once internationally prior to the worlds as he battled injuries early in the year.

‘’It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this situation,’’ said Despatie. ‘’But it feels great to be back at this level again. I realized today that the only way to compete with the best is through hard training. And that’s what I’ve done over the past three months.’’

Both Despatie and Ross earned their lowest marks with their reverse three and half. It is one of the hardest dives in the book with a 3.5 degree of difficulty.

“There’s a lot of variables in that dive, from the hurdle to the entry, and that’s what makes it so challenging,” said Ross, 23, who won bronze with Despatie in the three-metre synchro event on Saturday. ‘’As is the case for all my dives the big improvement I want to make in the final is to have better entries.’’

Also on the schedule Thursday are the preliminaries in the women’s three-metre synchro event. Jennifer Abel of Laval and Mélanie Rinaldi of Montreal will dive for Canada in that event.

On-line: http://www.diving.ca/english/html/events/2009/WC09.htm

About the 13th World Aquatic Championships
The 13th FINA World Aquatic Championships will take place July 17th to August 2nd, 2009 in Rome, Italy.In total, 2556 athletes from 185 countries will be competing in swimming, diving, water polo, synchronized swimming, and open water swimming. This 2009 edition of the championship is the biggest one in history. The previous mark was set in 2007 in Melbourne when 2158 athletes represented 167 countries.

In diving, 200 athletes from 43 nations will face-off in the ten events taking place between July 17th and 25th at Foro Italico in
Rome.A total of 400,000 spectators are expected to attend and watch the ‘best of the best’ in world aquatics.

The FINA World Championships began in Belgrade (YUG) in 1973 and had the participation of 696 athletes from 47 countries.

About Diving Plongeon Canada
Diving Plongeon Canada (DPC) was established in 1967 as a not-for-profit organization to promote the growth and awareness of the sport in this country. As a member of FINA, the world’s governing body of aquatic sports, DPC contributes to the development of globally accepted standards of excellence in diving and supports the rules and regulations of international competition. Representing nine provincial diving associations, 67 local diving clubs and close to 4,000 high performance athletes, DPC shares a national commitment to advance the art and sport of diving and to position Canada as the number one diving nation of the world.  For information, visit www.diving.ca.

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