SHANGHAI: All it took was just one bad dive to kill diving duo Leong Mun Yee-Pandelela Rinong’s hopes of defending their World Championships medal for Malaysia at the Oriental Sports Centre in Shanghai yesterday.
A medal in the women’s 10m synchro platform was still in sight for the Malaysian pair as they were fifth with two more dives to go and with just five points separating them and the two higher ranked teams – Germany’s Cristin Steuer-Nora Subschinski and Australia’s Melissa Wu-Alexandra Croak.
But the dumbfounded expression on the face of the Malaysian coach Yang Zhuliang said it all as Pandelela-Mun Yee made a big splash upon entry on their fourth dive.
They only earned 57.60 points and tumbled down to ninth position with a deficit of nearly 20 points to catch.
They managed to improve with their fifth and final dive, chalking up 75.84 points but it was too late as their hopes of qualifying early for the London Olympics next year had diminished by then.
Down we go: Malaysia’s Pandelela Rinong (left) and Leong Mun Yee diving during the women’s 10m synchro platform final at the FINA Swimming World Championships in Shanghai. — APPandelela-Mun Yee eventually placed sixth out of the 12 pairs in the final with 305.34 points behind Ukraine’s Viktoriya Potyekhina-Yulia Prokopchuk (311.64) and England’s Tonia Couch-Sarah Barrow (314.52).
China’s reigning Olympic champions Chen Ruolin-Wang Hao were in a class of their own as they romped to the gold with 362.58 points ahead of the New Delhi Commonwealth Games gold medallists Croak-Melissa, who managed 325.92 points.
The German duo of Steuer-Subschinski nailed the final Olympic ticket and the bronze medal with 316.29 points.
Pandelela-Mun Yee, who claimed a historic bronze at the last world meet in Rome two years ago, had qualified sixth with 289.50 points in the preliminaries earlier.
Pandelela had arrived in Shanghai from a one-month training stint in Dali with a sore back but but refused to use that as an excuse.
“I am not fully fit but it’s not the reason.
“We mis-timed our steps in the fourth dive – which was a three-and- a-half somersault.
“We could not control our rotation and the entry was not clean.
“That cost us a lot as we only got five and six when we needed to score seven and eight to stay in the fight.
“I’m disappointed not to be able to fight for a medal but I know we are still on track to qualify for the Olympics next year,” said Pandelela, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist in the 10m platform individual.
There will be four more Olympic spots to be decided at the World Cup in London next February and this does not include the host country England.
Pandelela will shift her focus to the individual discipline tomorrow where she hopes to reach the top-12 final to qualify on merit for the Olympics.
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