Canada’s Blythe Hartley leads Canadians
into semifinals at Grand Prix diving

Louis Daignault

VICTORIA, April 30, 2004 - She wasn’t at her very best but Blythe Hartley of North Vancouver, B.C., got the job done on Friday as she advanced to the semifinals on women’s three-metre springboard in preliminary round action at the 12-country Canada Cup diving meet.

The competition is also the sixth of nine stops on the FINA Grand Prix diving circuit.

Jingjing Guo of China is the leader at 327.60 points with Yulia Pakhalina of Russia second at 326.22 and Mingxia Wu of China third at 318.21. That’s the same order of finish as at last year’s world championships.

Hartley, a two-time world championship medallist, stands sixth at 304.26. Martha Dale of Edmonton also reached the semis placing ninth. Megan Farrow of Edmonton was 12th but doesn’t advance because there is a limit of two per country in the semis. Mandy Moran of Thunder Bay, Ont., was 16th, Émilie Heymans of St-Lambert, Que., 20th and Taryn Zack of Edmonton 25th.

The Canadians national team is just coming off a training camp period in Cuba and the focus right now for most of divers is on the Olympic trials next month in Winnipeg.

‘’The competitor in you really wants to perform at the top of the game against such a powerful field, especially at home,’’ said Hartley, now based in Montreal. ‘’But in a diving season, there are high and low periods and right now unfortunately we are in a low part building up to the trials.’’

In preliminaries on men’s 10-metre tower, Olympic champion Liang Tian of China leads at 537.63 with Rommel Pacheco of Mexico second at 459.87 and Leon Taylor of Britain third at 459.06.

Nicolas Leblanc of Montreal grabbed the last semifinal spot placing 12th. Christopher Kalec of Montreal just missed at 13th. Kevin Geyson of Winnipeg was 15th, Gorup-Paul Wegadesk of Victoria 16th and Erik Petursson of Calgary 18th.

‘’I was 14th heading into the last dive and I really had to nail that last one,’’ said Leblanc. ‘’I was pretty consistent except for one dive which I totally missed. I was trying to focus on the technical aspects of each dive.’’

World champion Alexandre Despatie of Laval, Que., skipped the event to focus on Saturday’s three-metre semifinal and final.

Competition continues Saturday at Saanich Commonwealth Place.

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