Diving Plongeon Canada – Meaghan Benfeito, 29, and Vincent Riendeau, 21, picked up the bronze medal in the mixed 10m synchro platform on Saturday at FINA Diving World Series #4 in Kazan, Russia.

It was the first time the two had teamed up since the Windsor Diving World Series in April of last year.

“I really enjoy diving with Vince because he’s kind of my comfort zone, our synchro comes natural because we’ve been doing it since 2015,” said Montreal’s Benfeito.

“To be able to just focus on our individual dives and not so much the synchro was really good for the both of us. And also to go over 300 points with one practice, I would say it was a pretty good event.”

This was Benfeito and Riendeau’s first crack at it this season because Benfeito won a gold medal with Nathan Zsombor-Murray at last week’s Diving World Series in Montreal, and Riendeau skipped the first two Diving World Series events of the season.

“I think that Meg and I are both quite happy with the result today, we put the old synchro team back together for the last leg of the world series to represent Canada,” said Riendeau, from Pointe-Claire, Que.

“It’s good that we did a lot in previous years so we got right back into the rhythm, of course there was a little bit of lag in the synchro, it wasn’t as good as it was the previous years because there wasn’t as much practice but we’re quite happy with the result.”

The Canadians tallied 306.72 points for the bronze, beaten by the People’s Republic of Korea’s Mi Hwa Kim and Il Myong Hyon, who scored 330.00 points for silver.

Iuliia Timoshinina and Nikita Shleikher, of Russia, won the gold with 331.35 points. 

Earlier, François Imbeau-Dulac, of Saint-Lazare, Que., finished fifth in the men’s 3m springboard final with 440.90 points. Siyi Xie, of China, took the gold medal with 536.60 points.

“I am very, very pleased with my performance today,” said the 27 year-old Imbeau-Dulac, who made his second-straight Diving World Series final.

“It was already a big plus to make it to the final, and I think I showed that I can be a very consistent diver internationally and I’m more than happy with how today went.”

Montreal’s Philippe Gagné was fourth in his semifinal (401.55 points) and did not advance.

Neither did Benfeito, in the women’s 10m platform. She was fourth in semifinal B (341.00 points), and Montreal’s Olivia Chamandy was a spot behind in the same semifinal with 300.85 points.

The final day of the Kazan Diving World Series will feature Olympians Pamela Ware and Jennifer Abel in women’s 3m springboard, Riendeau in men’s 10m platform, then Abel and Imbeau-Dulac together in mixed 3m synchro springboard.

For results: 

http://omegatiming.com/Competition?id=0001120003FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF&sport=AQ&year=2018

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For more information:

Dominique Ladouceur
Consultant, Communications and media relations
Diving Plongeon Canada
C: 514-576-2379 | dominique@diving.ca