My platform synchro diving dreams have been shattered but all is not lost

[divingbrit]

My platform synchro diving dreams at the London 2012 Olympics have been shattered but all is not lost, says Megan Sylvester

The harsh reality of elite sport has been brought home to me after my hopes of competing in the platform synchro at the London Olympics were all but ended a few weeks ago. The most painful thing was that it was completely out of my control. The door to the Olympics is not closed because there is still the individual platform competition to aim for, but the last few years my life have been dedicated to becoming one of the world’s best synchro divers and to have that taken away has been pretty hard to take.

The circumstances are that on the morning of the synchro competition at last month’s British Gas National Cup in Southend, my partner, Monique Gladding, was suffering from a sore tricep muscle and was advised by her physio to withdraw.

This was devastating news to me because the National Cup was a selection event for this week’s World Cup in the Olympic Aquatics Centre and pulling out meant there would be no chance for Monique and me to compete internationally before the Olympics. In other words, my London 2012 hopes in synchro were effectively over.

It is all the more disappointing given the high hopes I had of maybe even winning an Olympic medal. In 2009, Monique and I proved that we could mix it with the best when we finished sixth at the World Championships, and a year later we became the first British female divers to win a championship diving medal in 52 years when we took the bronze at the Europeans.

Unfortunately, our progress was halted a year ago in an awful way when Monique struck her head on the platform during a competition in Russia. She was lucky to survive the accident, but it meant she was out of diving for four months.
In her absence, I was paired with Becky Gallantree for two World Series events in Sheffield and Mexico and we immediately clicked by taking fourth place in both events against the world’s top pairs.

But bad luck struck again in June when I turned my ankle on a training run in Sheffield and ended up with a fracture and, more seriously, a snapped ligament that kept me out of diving until August.

Having resumed my partnership with Monique, I was really hopeful we would be one of the two GB pairs to go forward from Southend to the World Cup. Instead, Becky will be there with her new partner, Stacie Powell, along with the other British pair of Tonia Couch and Sarah Barrow.

I am standing by as a reserve but, as far as the Olympics go, I’m not pinning any hopes on making it in the synchro. Instead, I am now going all out to earn a place in the individual event.

The problem is that I have been concentrating more on synchro than individual, and my individual dive list needs to increase in difficulty if I am going to challenge for selection.

Four of my five dives are top-level but I now need to perfect a fifth, an arm-stand back triple, in time for the Olympic trials in June. Four months is not long but fortunately I’ve been learning the basics of it since November and I’m now working on it every day in training.

I have to believe that, if I can get it right, I can still make it to the London Olympics. I’d love nothing more than competing in front of a home crowd.

But if it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen. I’d obviously be disappointed but I’m still only 17 and there will plenty more opportunities to achieve my Olympic dreams. Whatever unfolds in the coming months, this is just the start of my career, not the end.

Telegraph.co.uk