THE CANADIAN PRESS
BEIJING — Canada’s podium drought at the Beijing Olympics continued Wednesday after Alexandre Despatie and Arturo Miranda placed fifth in the men’s three-metre synchronized diving event.
Despatie, of Laval, Que., and Montreal native Miranda couldn’t take advantage of their opponents’ miscues, finishing with 409.239 points for their six dives.
The Canadians were solidly in third place through three dives, but tumbled down the standings after posting the second-lowest score with their fourth attempt.
Despatie and Miranda still had a shot at the bronze, but their final dive — an inward three-and-a-half somersault — left them just under six points short of third place.
"For us a few too many mistakes on the synchronized part," Despatie said. "There’s no margin for mistakes against these guys — at least mistakes like we did."
Wang Feng and Qin Kai of China ran away with the gold medal, scoring 469.08 points, while Dmitry Sautin and Yuriy Kunakov of Russia (421.98) captured the silver. Illya Kvasha and Oleksiy Prygorov of Ukraine (415.05) won bronze.
Despatie and Miranda entered the event as podium hopefuls after finishing second in the discipline at last year’s world championships in Melbourne.
But Despatie suffered a setback in April, fracturing his foot and missing seven weeks of training.
"Probably some (people) are going to say that I got injured and we didn’t have a good preparation, but I don’t think so," Despatie said. "As long as I was injured Arturo was training and I did everything I could as soon as I was healed.
"We trained together as much as we could. Training was going well in these past days, but unfortunately it didn’t happen today."
Synchronized diving brought Canada its first medal of the 2004 Games in Athens, when Blythe Hartley of North Vancouver and Emily Heymans of St-Lambert, Que., earned a bronze in the 10-metre synchro event.
Heymans and Anne Montminy won a silver in women’s synchro platform in 2000 when the discipline was introduced at the Olympics.
