Diver Despatie to compete in final Olympic qualifier
Posted February 17, 2012 4:42 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
By Jennifer Lukas
CTVOlympics.ca Staff
After missing nearly a full year due to injury, Alexandre Despatie says he is healthy, strong and ready to fight for his fourth Olympic appearance.
“I’m feeling great,” Canada’s top male diver told CTVOlympics.ca this week, speaking from Germany where he recently finished seventh in the synchronized springboard in a tune-up event. “I’m really healthy right now and my knee is doing really great. All the work I’ve done this summer is really paying off.”
Despatie is preparing for this month’s FINA Diving World Cup event, scheduled for February 20-26 in London. An official test event ahead of the London 2012 Olympics, the World Cup will serve as the final qualifying opportunity ahead of the Games. It will also be Despatie’s first competition in the individual 3m springboard since he suffered a knee injury early last year.
“The World Cup in London is, ultimately, the last chance to qualify your country,” the Laval, Que., native explained. “And since no [Canadian] has opened up a spot in the men’s 3m event, it makes it that important. If we don’t do well enough over there, there won’t be Canadian men on the 3m in the Olympics.”
Despatie needs to finish inside the top 18 in order to qualify. The standard will be even tougher in the synchronized 3m competition with partner Reuben Ross; a top four finish would guarantee an Olympic berth, while a top eight result could be enough depending on how competing nations finish.
“I don’t want to, obviously, burn any bridges, but if everything goes according to plan I’ll be in the top 18 and I’ll be able to move forward to the Olympics,” Despatie said.
“I’m focused on qualifying with top 18 and everything else is icing on the cake.”
It has been a long road back from injury for Despatie, who also overcame a broken foot just four months ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing to earn a silver medal in the individual 3m competition.
He went on to earn two bronze medals at the 2009 FINA World Championships before he began suffering knee pain in March of last year. Despatie bowed out of the 2011 World Championships to let himself heal and only got back into the pool this past fall.
“I feel like a child again,” Despatie told CTVOlympics.ca in November. “At the stage I am at right now I am doing very, very, very basic stuff, stuff that I teach little kids.”
Many of the world’s top diving nations have already earned Olympic places after athletes made good in their first qualification opportunity at the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai. China’s He Chong, Ruolin Chen and the 17-year-old British phenom, Tom Daley, all qualified on behalf of their respective nations and will compete at the test event without that additional pressure on their shoulders.
Canada earned six of a possible 12 slots of its own in Shanghai, but with Despatie left nursing his injury at home, the team fell well short of its potential.
Meaghan Benfeito of Montreal and Roseline Filion of Laval, Que., each qualified individually, but finished in a disappointing seventh place in the synchronized 10m platform. Considered among the world’s top divers in the event, the duo missed Olympic qualification by a surprisingly wide margin. Benfeito and Filion will be back for a second try in London.
In the men’s 10m platform, Eric Sehn of Edmonton and Kevin Geyson of Winnipeg will attempt to qualify in the men’s synchronized event. Sehn will also try to add to the single Olympic berth that teammate Riley McCormick earned last year in Shanghai.
Canada has qualified in all other categories, but divers like World 3m silver and bronze medallist Jennifer Abel and three-time Olympic medallist Émilie Heymans of St-Lambert, Que., will seize the opportunity to compete in the 2012 Olympic venue.
The Aquatics Centre in London’s Olympic Park could be the site where Heymans earns her fourth Olympic medal in as many Games. If she finishes on the podium, she will be the first diver to ever accomplish the feat.
Heymans is also looking to bounce back from a 12th-place finish at the World Championships last year. The result was good enough to earn an Olympic berth, but far from her usual standard.
“It was one of my worst performances in quite some time,” said Heymans, in a July release. “I’ll have to take a step back and see what happened.”
The Olympic qualification process requires divers to earn berths on behalf of their respective nations rather than as individuals. Some Canadian divers, like Despatie, have already earned national nomination by virtue of past finishes. For the others, Canada will run selection trials before naming an Olympic team.
Jennifer Lukas is the Digital lead Aquatics producer for CTVOlympics.ca. She is in London this week, reporting on the FINA Diving World Cup and Olympic test event from the Aquatics Centre in Olympic Park. Follow her updates on Twitter at @JenniferLukas and join in the conversation at @CTVOlympics.
