Nouvelles-sport canadien
June 8, 2007
Two bronze medals for Roseline Filion at diving Grand Prix
MADRID � Roseline Filion of Laval, Que., won the bronze medal on women�s 10-metre tower and combined forces with Meaghan Benfeito of Montreal for another third place finish on 10-metre synchro on Friday to open the fifth stop on the FINA Grand Prix diving circuit.
Lao Lishi led China to a 1-2 finish with 384.85 points with Hao Wang second at 373.50 and Filion third at 344.90. Rachel Kemp of Victoria equaled her best-ever international result placing fourth at 337.80.
��It went really well,�� said Filion. ��I started slowly in the preliminaries and I just got progressively better. In the final I hit all my dives and I was very consistent. I was primarily focusing on having clean entries.��
Kemp, the youngest national team member at 14, was hoping to fare better on her last dive in the final -a back twisting dive -on which she registered 6.0�s and 7.0�s from the judges.
��It�s usually a very reliable dive for me,�� said Kemp. ��I don�t know what happened. I felt pretty relaxed before the dive. But overall I was very pleased with my performance. I made my dives look a lot better and that was my goal here.��
In women�s 10-metre synchro, Wang and Li Kang of China were the winners at 330.90 points, Haley Ishimatsu and Mary Beth Dunnichay of the U.S., were second at 301.44 and Filion and Benfeito took third spot at 289.50. The Canadian pair, world championship bronze medalists in 2005, were also third at last week�s Grand Prix stop in Russia.
��We improved our synchronization from last week but individually we could have been better,�� said Benfeito. ��We made one change to our list from last week as well and it was beneficial for us. We scored more points with that new dive.��
On men�s three-metre, Bo Peng of China won the gold, Illya Kvasha of Ukraine was second and Troy Dumais of the U.S., third.
Eric Sehn of Edmonton was 14th in the preliminaries and eliminated and David Ovelson of Edmonton 25th.
Competition continues through to Sunday.