Britain’s wonder diver Tom Daley received 10 perfect marks of 10.0 in the platform final but not even those were enough against Russia’s Aleksandr Bondar who was out of this world during the evening as he showed an almost flawless performance to win the men’s 10m title. Earlier the diving contest saw the tiniest winning margin ever recorded at European Championships when Lena Hentschel and Tina Punzel of Germany edged out Italy’s Elena Bertocchi and Chiara Pellacani by 0.09 points in the women’s 3m synchro. In the lake French distance king Axel Reymond reconquered his 25km title among the men after 2014 and 2016, while Germany’s Lea Boy claimed a big win in the women’s race on the closing day at the open water swimming competitions.
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Axel Reymond is a specialist at the
25km races, he won back-to-back European golds in 2014 and 2016 and clinched
the world titles in 2017 and 2019, only to miss the podium in 2018. In Glasgow
he came 4th, perhaps the most disappointing placement in this event, leaving
the course empty-handed after swimming 25,000m. It was a painful experience for
the French distance king and he was determined to re-conquer his title and also
admitted that he wanted to prevent the Italian sweep after Gregorio Paltrinieri
doubled down the 5-10km and was part of the winning team too.
Still, as it was usual this week at
Lake Lupa, Italy had a serious title-contender over this distance too. It was
veteran 32 year-old Matteo Furlan who kept up with the Frenchman but he could
never really stay close to him over the second half of the race. It wasn’t a
huge gap but did not go under 4sec and at the end Reymond won by 5.3sec, kind
of comfortably. In the meantime Russia’s Kirill Abrosimov resurfaced before the
final 500m (he was second in the middle of the race for a while) and challenged
Furlan heavily but the Italian withstood the pressure and touched in 1.1sec
ahead of him.
In the women’s race Lea Boy, just
like Reymond, always swam in the leading pack, was ranked 1-3rd at each
checking point. For a while she was in front with the others (the company changed
from time to time), then she switched gears at 20km and never looked back.
Well, she did it sometimes but could not see anyone following her since by the
last lap she built a full minute advantage and kept it till the end.
The battle for the minor spoils
turned into a three-horse race with France’s Lara Grangeon, Italy’s Barbara
Pozzobon and Hungary’s Kata Somenek Onon. The two more experienced swimmers
could rush ahead in the final lap, by two body-lengths, and decided the
remaining two spots on the podium between themselves. Grangeon out-touched her
rival by 0.3sec but Pozzobon’s bronze – a first-ever podium for her at majors –
also meant that Italy could claim a medal in each event at the championships.
Not surprisingly, they won the Team Trophy by a huge margin ahead of the French
and the Hungarians.
While a couple of tenths decided on
the medals sometimes in the lake, the diving pool saw even tighter finishes on
the closing day in the women’s 3m synchro final. As if Elena Bertocchi and
Chiara Pellacani had copy-pasted Lena Hentschel and Tina Punzel’s dives in
performing (their programme was not identical). Their scores were similar
during the entire session, though the Italians had a weaker second jump (44.40,
each mark under 8.0) but they came up with the highest scoring dive of the
final in the fourth for 74.40 points and took over the lead by 1.20. The
quality of the last attempts was not superb but the Germans’ had a higher DD
(3.1 vs 3.0) and even though the marks were almost the same, that gave them the
winning edge by 0.09 points. It was a huge relief for Punzel who had five
silver medals and a bronze in this event since 2014 – now she claimed gold at
last. The battle for the bronze was just as tight – it came down to 0.3 points,
which favoured the Russians Uliana Kliueva and Vitaliia Koroleva over GB’s
Grace Reid and Katherine Torrence. And as usual, the best was saved for the
last – the men’s 10m final proved to be the crowning event once more.
Title-holder Oleksi Sereda kicked off the party receiving three 10s to his
opening dive but the two Russians Viktor Minibaev and Aleksandr Bondar also
began the evening in style, not to mention world champion Tom Daley who also
received three perfect marks in the opening round.
The second then divided the field,
Sereda bowed out after a complete miss and Daley’s attempt was also mediocre
while the Russians held on, both earning a couple of 10s. Bondar remained
phenomenal, his consistency was simply amazing, after he got 10s for his first
two dives, he deserved that again for this fifth one and all but two marks out
of the 54 was 8.0 – all the others were 8.5 and higher. His 564.35 points in
total is a fantastic result, though the Arena’s record still belongs to Daley
who had won at the 2017 Worlds with 590.
Daley bounced back with two
magnificent attempts in the fourth and fifth, got seven more 10s (3 and 4 – had
10 altogether out of the 20 perfect marks the judges threw out this evening),
his 109.15 pointer in the penultimate round was a class of its own. That
decreased the gap to 16.45 points between him and Bondar but the Russian didn’t
crack under pressure. Instead he offered another nearly perfect dive, his fifth
over 90 points (and the sixth was 89.25) while Daley couldn’t maintain his
level from the previous rounds but at least clinched the silver by 3.35 points
ahead of Minibaev. The Brit produced three of the four highest scoring dives in
the final but lacked the balance what Bondar showed throughout the evening.
It was a fitting end to the diving competition
– and these two more medals secured that Russia won the Team Trophy, Germany
was the runner-up, ahead of Great Britain.
For detailed results and more, visit www.len.eu
Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Perottino /
Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
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