Platform, Men

More expectation than usual greeted the platform event at the London 2012 for it pitted the two most recent world champions and the Olympic champion against each other with all three being superstars in their countries. The reigning world champion was 19 year old Qiu Bo of China who had posted some phenomenal scores over the last 18 months including a record breaking score of 609 at a meeting in Moscow. This was the first time a diver had scored over 600 points. The home favourite was Tom Daley, Bo’s predecessor as world champion, who was treated in the same way as a pop star in Britain whilst Matt Mitcham of Australia would return to defend his Olympic title.

There were some doubts about both Daley and Mitcham as both had faced personal difficulties before the Games. Daley had lost his father after a long battle with cancer in 2011 whilst Mitcham had struggled with the fame that his Olympic title had given him and confessed that at one point he had become addicted to crystal meth.

Through the qualifying rounds Bo appeared a class apart from his opposition and finished 30 points clear of anyone in both the preliminary and semi-finals. The final however would turn out to be a vastly different competition. For the first five dives Bo, Daley and American David Boudia were almost inseparable on the leader board and with the only the final set of dives to go the Briton held a miniscule lead of 0.15 points over Bo and Boudia who were tied for second place. In truth there was little to choose between the three men’s execution of their dives. Daley’s dive may have been the cleanest of the three but it was of a lower difficulty than the other two dives so Boudia, whose dive was adjudged slightly superior to that of Bo, became Olympic champion by the slender margin of 1.8 points. Although Boudia was the silver medallist at the 2011 World Championship his victory was still considered a major surprise as few thought Bo could be beaten. Despite only qualifying in the 16th and last available position from the preliminary round, he was the first American to win an Olympic diving title since Mark Lenzi in 1992.