Meaghan Benfeito finished fifth in the 10m platform on Wednesday, advancing to Thursday’s semifinals. Celina Toth missed qualifying for the semis, finishing 23rd in the event at the Olympic Games. 

The top 18 divers in Wednesday’s competition advanced to the semifinals.

Benfeito (Laval, QC), who won a bronze medal in the event at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, finished with a combined score of 331.85.

“I think experience showed a lot today. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks leading up,” said Benfeito. “Training hasn’t been going exactly how I wanted it to go so to rely on experience is really what I was focused on today. It was a pretty decent job. I am very satisfied with the scores, the dives, but its time to take it up a notch tomorrow.”

Benfeito and teammate Caeli McKay finished fourth in the women’s 10m synchro event last week. The 32-year-old said her synchro training helped her prepare for the individual competition this week. 

“I think synchro actually helped me mentally for this event just cause the training was really rough,” Benfeito said. “I really wasn’t making my dives. Doing them in synchro, they were OK, and they felt better than what I was doing so that kind of made me realize, ‘yes experience does help,’ and I can rely on that more than doubting myself. It’s OK if I miss it in the practice right before the event, I know that I know how to do it in the event so I think that really helped me with this event.”

Toth (Victoria, BC) finished Wednesday’s competition with a cumulative score of 261.40 and missed out on advancing. The 29-year-old was competing in her first Olympics. 

She was 30th following her first dive – the reverse two-and-a-half somersaults – but recovered to finish 23rd.

“I think the nerves got the better of me. After my second dive, I said to my coach, ‘now I understand why good divers make mistakes at the Olympics’ because it’s overwhelming,” said Toth. “Everything that I’ve done to get here and what I’ve done here, I’ve never been diving better and that was not a representation of what I can do. These last two weeks have been awesome, and I’ve been nailing my dives. I didn’t miss a thing during training so that’s probably the worst I’ve done this whole time we’ve been here which is a shame.”

Yuxi Chen of China finished first in the preliminary round scoring 390.70 while her teammate Hongchan Quan was second with 364.45 points. 

Schedule, Results, Team Information, and Previous Olympic Statistics

• English : https://diving.ca/2020-olympic-games/
• Français : https://diving.ca/2020-olympic-games/

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 in the world. For information, visit www.diving.ca. 

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