Colwill Nails Down Spot in Diving Finals

Posted Aug 18, 2008 by Bill Ward

Updated Aug 19, 2008 at 12:12 AM

As a child whose energy sometimes landed him in a hospital emergency room with bumps and bruises, Chris Colwill earned the nickname “The Cardiac Kid” from his parents, Chuck and Debbie Colwill.

In Tuesday morning’s Olympic diving semifinals in men’s 3-meter springboard, Colwill found another way to send his mom and dad’s hearts racing.

Perilously close to not reaching the event’s finals, the 23-year-old Brandon native vaulted from 10th to sixth place on his final dive to secure his spot in the medal round. Only the top 12 from the 18 semifinalists moved on to the final round.

“He did it to us again,” Chuck Colwill said with a laugh, via phone, shortly after the semifinals ended. “He just nailed that last dive. Wow! What a dive that was!”

All of the semifinalists performed six dives each. Colwill scored in the 70-point range for his first four dives and was in 12th place at that point. But he scored 85.75 on his fifth dive and, on his last dive—a reverse 3-1/2 somersault tuck—Colwill was awarded a whopping 94.5 by the judges to jump to a more comfortable sixth place with a combined score of 480.95.

Colwill’s final dive turned out to be the third-highest score awarded out of the 108 dives performed in the semifinals. China’s He Chong topped the semifinals round with a score of 547.25 while Canada’s Alexandre Despatie was second at 518.75. Colwill was less than two points out of fifth place and finished ahead of U.S. teammate Troy Dumais, who was 10th at 463.15.

The finals are slated for 8:30 p.m. Tuesday in Beijing, 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in Tampa. As was the case in the semifinals, scores don’t carry over to the next round and all 12 finalists will start with a score of zero.

Colwill plans to upgrade his degree of difficulty for the finals and would have the highest DD of any diver in the finals. He plans to perform a reverse 2 ½ with 2 ½ twists, a dive with a 3.9 DD that only Mexico’s Yahel Castillo has performed in the Games. The new dive will give Colwill an additional five-tenths in DD, for a total of 20.4. He Chong has been competing a list with a degree of difficulty of 20.2.