Positive takeaway in debut: Bertrand Rhodict in action during the men’s 10m platform event. — Bernama
PETALING JAYA: National diver Bertrand Rhodict may have come up short in the men’s 10m platform event at the Paris Olympics, but the debutant’s courage in taking risks needs to be applauded, says Bryan Nickson Lomas.
The national diving technical director said the 19-year-old’s bravery to take the plunge into learning new difficult dives for the Olympics was a positive takeaway for Bertrand in the future.
“One positive takeaway from this Games is his effort to learn a new high-difficulty dive and his willingness to take the risk of executing it in a short period of time,” said Bryan.
Bertrand finished 25th out of 26 divers in the preliminary round and it has left the young diver devastated. He said the nerves of competing in his first Olympics had got to him.
Bertrand’s score was far from his personal best of 442.35 which earned him a ticket to Paris, as he only mustered a total of 313.70 after six dives at the Aquatics Centre on Friday.
Three-time Olympian Bryan said: “There is a lot of room for improvement for Bertrand. We could see that he was under pressure.
“But I don’t think that was the main reason he couldn’t perform at his best. One thing to improve on is in terms of his training and personal matters,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bryan said women’s 3m springboard diver Nur Dhabitah Sabri had done well in Paris.
“Dhabitah qualified through an unused quota, which is different from a wildcard. In my opinion, she performed well,” he said.
“Although she could have done better in the final and achieved higher scores, her semi-final score was actually her season-best performance.
“She really followed all the training plans from coaches, technical team, and sports science team,” said Bryan.
Her score of 286.95 in the semi-final was better than her previous score of 238.15 at the World Championships in Doha in February.
Dhabitah finished in last place with a score of 244.80 in the final due to poor dives in her third and fourth attempts.
Bryan added that both divers will get some downtime with their families after being away for an extended period of time due to training camps overseas.
