Although Tom Daley earned the right to dive last in tonight's Commonwealth Games 10m platform final by scoring the highest mark from his six preliminary dives, once again the back two-and-a-half somersault two-and-a-half twist dive, or the 'twister', got the better of him this lunchtime.
The 20-year-old was in last place a third of the way through qualifying after a score of just 37.8 on a dive that he described as "terrifying" earlier this year. He recovered with two scores of more than 100 in rounds four and five, including the first 10s from the judges at the Games, to finish with 488.85, which was 38 points better than his closest rival, Matthew Mitcham of Australia.
Despite being favourite to retain his Commonwealth title at 10m, 20-year-old Daley is still clearly having issues with the twister, and Sports Mole quizzed him on a dive for which Mitcham scored almost perfectly at the 2008 Olympics to win gold and register the highest-scoring dive in Olympic history.
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You've said that the twister is terrifying before and have sought therapy on the issue. Do you think you can sort it out for tonight?
"That's the thing with that dive - you just do never know how it's going to go. I'm going to give it my best shot and that's all I can do but it's just one of those things that you have to get into the right frame of mind for the competition."
Why can't you change your routine and take it out if you find it so terrifying?
"Because. You'd only understand if you were a gymnast or a diver, some people have very big issues between switching between one-and-a-half twist, two-and-a-half twist, three-and-a-half twist, it's very confusing.
"Somersaults is a lot easier to distinguish whereas twists are quite hard to. In the off-season it might be that we break something down and learn a new dive, make something up that's new, who knows? We're going to have to figure it out."
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You still finished with the top score in prelims even after that poor start. If the second dive doesn't go well tonight, do you think you can still recover and come top again?
"I mean, I know that all my other dives are solid and consistent. If I can nail all my other dives. I need to do a good twister, I want to do a good twister, it's not a question of if I need to or not - I want to.
"No matter what the other dives are like, I'd like to be able to go out there and be competitive after two rounds, rather than only making it back up to the top after the fifth round."
The final, which is the last diving event of Glasgow 2014, begins at around 7.30pm this evening.
Pascal Lemesre
