"VAN" (Sports Desk - Tokyo2020 - 26.07.2021) :: Canadian pair came back strong to claim a medal in the women's 3m synchro springboard and talked us through their emotions after a final dive that drove them to the podium.
Jennifer Abel and Melissa Citrini-Beaulieu have been training for this moment since 2017.
And on the biggest stage of all, they delivered – for their country, and for themselves.
The synchro-diving pair overcame a shaky opening few dives to clinch the silver medal in the women’s 3m synchro springboard at the Tokyo 2020 Games on Sunday (25th July).
“I’m very happy,” Abel told Olympics.com.
“It’s funny because I just thought about it, that now I will have to change bronze medallist in London to a silver medallist in Tokyo 2020.
And for teammate Citrini-Beaulieu, not only is it her first Olympic medal, but this has also been her Games debut.
“I feel amazing [about winning silver], it feels unreal,” she told us.
“I’m just so happy and happy about our performance – it feels amazing.”
After the opening two dives, the pair found themselves in sixth position.
But what may have looked like nerves to others, was just the two beginning the competition with their smaller dives, before kicking on with the big guns.
“We knew we had a slow start, but we didn’t really pay attention to it.
“Usually in synchro events, everything [gets] started after the first two dives, so the third round is the one that [is] really going to put all the teams in the competition,” said Abel.
“We knew that Melissa and I are much stronger with our [later] dives than our smaller dives, so we didn’t really get bothered by it.”
After coming back strong, the Canadians seemed to pull away from the pack, and had a clear hold of the silver medal position, behind China, with one dive remaining.
Citrini-Beaulieu talked us through what she was thinking in those moments stepping up to the final dive of the competition.
“I was there and I’m like ‘we have worked so hard to be here and it’s the moment to do, so just do it’,” she told Olympics.com.
“It’s not the time to choke or not do what you need to, so I was just there like ‘it’s going down, we got it,' and it went pretty well.”
Abel, who has been in a similar position before, expresses her delight in being able to do this with Cintrini-Beaulieu.
“I’m so proud to be able to beat that [bronze in London] with Melissa because we did it as a team and we did it together.
“We worked, for instance, [since] 2017 and it was out place.
“We worked hard for it, and we went to get it.”
TOKYO2020
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