Lois Toulson and Eden Cheng bounce back from nervy opening in Olympic final

Lois Toulson and Eden Cheng bounced back from a nervy opening dive in the Women’s Synchronised 10m Platform at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

The duo found themselves eighth at the end of round one after scoring only 43.20 points from their back dive in pike position.

It ensured they were always chasing the rest of the field but they failed to let it disappoint them and continually improved as the competition progressed.

Although they were still eight after round three, they produced their highest scoring dive with their next jump – an inward three-and-a-half somersaults in tuck which scored 71.04 points.

By this stage, Toulson and Olympic debutant Cheng were looking more assured and confident and they followed that up another strong dive.

Their back two-and-a-half somersaults, one-and-a-half twists in pike earned them 69.12 points and a seventh place finish overall with a total score of 289.26.

Despite an encouraging finish, Toulson admitted they could have done better.

She said: “I think, overall, we’re pretty disappointed.

Use it as experience

“We know we can dive a lot better than that. We managed to do a couple of good dives in there which we’re happy with, but there was a lot of room for improvement – we’ve been diving a lot better than that, so it is just frustrating.

“Hopefully I can put that behind me and use it as experience, I guess. I feel like I’ve got rid of some of the cobwebs now, so hopefully I’ll be ready to go for next week.

“I have targets in terms of individual dives, but I don’t really think about positions or placings.”

Olympic debutant Cheng added: “The training in the past week prior to competition was a lot better than we put out.

“We’ve been getting high scores a lot recently, so it’s a bit of a downer.

“There were probably just a few nerves. This is still one of the few competitions that we have competed in in the last couple of years, due to the pandemic.”

It was a closely contested battle for the bronze medal with the Mexican pair of Gabriela Agundez Garcia and Alejandra Orozco Loza taking third spot with a score of 299.70 – only 0.64 ahead of the Canadian duo of Meaghan Benefit and Caeli McKay.

Chinese teenagers Yuxi Chen and Jiaqi Zhang are head and shoulders above the rest of the field as they took gold with 363.78 points, with the American pair of Jessica Parratto and Delaney Schnell silver medallists on 310.80.

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