Conservative approach leaves Canadian platform diver in fifth place after four semifinal plunges

Dave Feschuk

ATHENS�Emilie Heymans was asked if her coach was happy with how she'd been performing at the Olympics. Although the reigning world champion in 10-metre platform diving is a woman of few words, in this case one sufficed: "No."

"She's the best diver here," said Michel Larouche, Heymans' slightly exasperated coach. "(But) she approached (yesterday) with the idea of not making mistakes. And when you do that you don't perform well.

"I'm going to have a little talk with her. ... It's going to be a soft talk, just to make her realize what she can do."

What she can do, of course, is wondrous, the mid-air fashioning of straight lines and right angles out of muscle and sinew and nerve. But yesterday she scored fifth best on the four semifinal dives that, combined with the tallies of five dives in today's final, will decide the medals. That means she is going into one of the biggest days of her sporting life trailing Loudy Tourky of Australia, the overnight leader, by about 22 points. The margin, Larouche said, can be "easily" overcome.

"It's not the results that really disappoint me, it's the attitude," the coach said. "And that's what we have to correct."

For Heymans, who will be joined in the final by fellow Quebecer Myriam Boileau, she of the ninth-best semifinal scores, today will bring at least one adjustment that isn't attitudinal. Heymans will ditch the swimsuit she wore yesterday � a royal-blue-and-yellow job that made her look like a member of the Swedish national team � for the talisman of a Speedo she was wearing when she won the world title. Said Heymans: "It's kind of a pink-and-yellow, orange-and-purple suit."

What she won't change is her stoic, almost trance-like competitive countenance. Heymans, long thought by her teammates to be aloof until she was diagnosed with a hearing problem, was asked yesterday if she was intimidated by the Chinese rivals and their almost robotic efficiency, but she said she "doesn't pay attention to things like that." She makes a habit of neither watching her competitors nor seeking out their scores.

"(In Athens) it's almost easier because they announce the scores in Greek, so I don't understand what they're saying," Heymans said. "I don't know their score � and sometimes I don't even know mine. If I don't know what's going on it's easier to stay focused on my competition and not be distracted."

For Boileau, the trip to the final is an unexpected, well-earned triumph. Though she's been among Canada's top three platform divers for most of the past decade, the country can only send two divers to any one Olympic event, so she failed to qualify for the Games in 1996 and 2000.

Then her health failed. It was only a couple of years ago that Boileau suffered from back problems so intense that she'd get out of her car at red lights to take pain-relieving walks. Experimental surgery followed, a procedure that involved searing her herniated disks with a hot metal wire injected through a needle and into her spine, all while she was awake. And it wasn't until last year that her pain was more comprehensively relieved by the work of an osteopath.

In the Boileau camp, then, there was exuberance, although it was tempered by her coach's demeanour.

"My coach, she's Chinese, so most of the time she wouldn't show all the emotion," Boileau said. "But I can see now she's really happy. She's very pleased with what I'm doing now. ... But she said, `Don't forget, in the final nothing is certain. Just go for it.'"

Just go for it: That was Larouche's message to his prized pupil, too. So many titles, after all, are so much more accessible; you can win a World Cup and a world championship with the turn of every calendar. But when you ask an Olympian if they'll be around in Beijing in 2008, the answer yes is only a guess.

"It's a very, very important moment, especially when you have the opportunity to become the Olympic champion," Larouche said. "It's something unique in your life. You also have to think, no matter how good you are, (that this Olympics is) the last one you're going to participate in. You don't know what's going to happen in four years. Life is life. There are things you don't expect that happen.

"Who knows? It might be the last Games for Emilie, it might be the last for Myriam. They just have to express themselves as best they can and feel happy about it."

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