Canada's first medal in men's diving
Quebec diver a good bet in platform

Dave Feschuk

ATHENS�When 13-year-old Alexandre Despatie won gold in platform diving at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, he was a 4-foot-11 kid with a mouth full of braces, and it wasn't just the fans in Malaysia whose collective jaw was left hanging open.

It was difficult not to marvel at the adorable boy from Laval, Que., who informed reporters that he "didn't mind missing school" while he collected his September medal.

He was not yet tall enough to ride a rollercoaster, light enough that he hit the water with all the ruckus of a bug. Yet a judge had just given him his first world-class perfect 10 in his first elite meet. And even the folks at Guinness, the world record book, came calling, chronicling him as the youngest person to win an international diving competition.

Those were perhaps some of the images running through Michel Larouche's mind yesterday, when Despatie, whom Larouche has coached since age 5, fulfilled his long-tipped promise by winning Olympic silver in three-metre springboard diving. It was Canada's first-ever hardware in men's diving at a Games, and considering Despatie is the defending world champion in his other Olympic event, the 10-metre platform competition that begins tomorrow, it doesn't figure to be the last.

"Alexandre is like a (son) to me," said Larouche. "When something like this happens you see all those years go by (in your mind). ... You see the kid when he was 5 years old and 13 years old."

At age 19 Despatie was the second-youngest competitor in yesterday's final. But he was a long way from the days when his boyish charm and Smurf-like size earned him what became known as "cute points" from the judges.

"When you look like a man you get scored like a man," said Larouche. "`Oh, how cute!' That's finished now. He has to perform like men perform."

He performed admirably against a handful of the best men in the sport yesterday, but in the end Chinese navy lieutenant Peng Bo was the victor, scoring five out of a possible seven perfect 10s on his second dive and never faltering. In the end, he missed tying the world record by a half point.

"Peng Bo tonight was just impeccable," said Despatie. "You want an Olympic performance, that's what it is."

Bronze went to the bone-weary Russian Dmitri Sautin, whose battered body has weathered everything from a stab wound � in a Moscow mugging in 1991 � to a raft of surgeries to repair a bad back and a bum shoulder. It was Sautin's seventh Olympic medal, and as he was saying at the post-competition press conference, at age 30 it was perhaps his most unlikely.

As Sautin spoke in Russian, Peng, a seemingly infallible stoic in competition, was hamming it up in a hushed voice, flashing a grin and slapping Despatie on the knee.

"What's this?" Peng said in English, tugging on his gold medal.

Despatie smiled: "It's a gold medal. It's yours."

Peng pointed at the medal and he pointed at Despatie.

"And yours one day," seemed to be the message.

Despatie smiled and shrugged. His gold could come as early as Saturday, in the platform finals. But duplicating his world championship triumph won't be as simple as defeating a field that will be largely the same as he faced in February.

"This is the Olympic Games. There's a lot more attention," he said. "The stands are full � it wasn't like that (at the world championships). ... There's a lot more stuff around � cameras everywhere. This is all stuff that you don't see very much during the normal grands prix or world cups. ... Even if you try to really get into your bubble and focus and try to think that you're not at the Olympics, that's impossible.

"Because it's everywhere. The (five) rings are everywhere. Athens 2004 is everywhere. So you might as well accept it and deal with it. Because you're at the Olympics and the Olympics is the biggest thing there is."

Despatie was the tiniest of creatures when he joined Montreal's legendary diving club CAMO as a 5-year-old.

"He was short, and he was cute, too," said Larouche. And his repertoire was slightly more limited than it was last night, when he stuck a forward 2 1/2 somersault with two twists on his sixth and final turn to seal his silver.

"Front dive, back dive, fun dive," said Larouche, recalling the 5-year-old's arsenal. "But it was the way he was learning things really, really quickly that was (atypical)."

Despatie learned he'd won silver after most other people in the stands already knew. Like a lot of divers, he eschews scoreboard watching. And after his disastrous third dive � wherein he released from his somersault too early and entered the water with a cannonball-ish splash that got him a low mark of 5.5 from the Swedish judge � Despatie said he assumed he was long out of the race for the hardware.

"The thought of giving up is always there, saying, `What's the point now, since I missed?'" he said. "But I didn't give up. I went back there, focused on the next dive. And I think that was the right thing to do. I was able to come back when it counts. This is not just another grand prix, this is the Olympic Games."

It was Sautin's fourth Olympic Games, and he said in the press conference that it was "perhaps" his last. Perhaps the world's best-known diver, he was asked to assess the young Canadian sitting down the table.

"Alex is a very unique person," said the Russian. "He became a super athlete. His diving has improved. ... I wish him every success and health in the future to continue to win over and over again."

Despatie offered his competitor a grateful salute, a wave and a smile. Then he addressed his compatriots.

"I'm obviously aware of Canada's performance so far. Hopefully this can cheer people up," Despatie said. "Competition is a very, very strange thing sometimes. And this is the Olympic Games, so it's even more strange."

put on line by SVP