photo : Canadian Press

Despatie prepares for Athens

By Donna Spencer

TORONTO (CP) - Alexandre Despatie is coming off one of his most successful international diving seasons ever, but he says the Olympic Games in Athens will be like no other event he's been in this year.

"It's a whole different competition, even though it's the same people, even though it's the same pool we were at in February, it's a whole different game," Despatie said Wednesday. "A lot of things happen at the Games. Sometimes you see people crumble. Sometimes you see people you have never seen before step up and be there."

The 18-year-old from Laval, Que., speaks like an Olympic veteran because he is one.

He was the youngest athlete on the entire Canadian team at the Sydney Olympics at age 15 and he was barely held off the podium, finishing fourth in the 10-metre tower.

Since then, he's won a world championship in that event, a raft of Pan Am and Commonwealth Games gold medals as well as a lot of hardware on the international Grand Prix diving circuit.

Despatie and Canadian teammates Chris Kalec of Laval, Que., and Myriam Boileau of Montreal were in Toronto on Wednesday to spend some time with a group of junior divers and the media at the University of Toronto pool.

The three put on a diving demonstration. Despatie nearly touched the roof when he hurdled off the springboard and his hands made resounding cracks when they hit the water.

He is a broader, more muscular diver than he was in Sydney and has an entirely different body shape than the tiny 13-year-old who set the diving world on its ear by winning a Commonwealth Games gold medal in 1998.

He accepts that others' expectations of him in Athens will be high, but isn't making any predictions himself.

"I don't want to say because the year is going well, that it's going to go well at the Olympics because we don't know," he said. "So far the preparation is going fine. I'm competing well and that's the only thing that matters."

In three Grand Prix meets in February and March, Despatie won three gold medals in the three-metre springboard and a gold and two bronze in the 10-metre event. One of those events was held at the Olympic venue in Athens.

Despatie likes the Athens setup although he said for the Grand Prix event, the water was far too warm.

"It's like diving into a hot tub which isn't good," he said.

He is one of the few divers who competes in both three-metre and 10-metre disciplines and admitted that fatigue caught up with him on the tower in Athens. But at the Grand Prix in Russia last month, he pulled off double gold.

He wants to compete in both events as well as the 10-metre synchronized event in Athens.

Despatie and the rest of the Canadian team will host the Canadian Grand Prix in Victoria starting April 29 before heading to Texas for the U.S. Grand Prix next month.

The Canadian team Olympic trials will be June 4-6 in Winnipeg.

Despatie, who is taking the semester off school to prepare for the Olympics, has the option of competitions in China in May and the Grand Prix final in Mexico in June. But he doesn't want to overdo it.

"We want to be ready for the Games and not tired," he said. "The most important thing is to be rested for the Games."

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