Gay Olympic hero Matthew Mitcham fails to join Tom Daley in diving final
Australian reigning Olympic 10m platform diving champion Matthew Mitcham has narrowly missed out on a place in tonight’s Olympic final.
The 24-year-old Queensland native was ranked 13th in this morning’s semi-final and with 482.40 points narrowly missed out on defending his Olympic title. Mitcham left the poolside with tears in his eyes.
Meanwhile, Great Britain’s Tom Daley ended the semi-final in fourth place with 521.1 points.
Following yesterday’s preliminary heats, Mitcham said: “I felt liked I dived pretty scrappily”,
“What I got from the prelims was that it’s been such a long time since I’ve dived with adrenaline and I was over-cooking a lot of my dives, which I wasn’t expecting”, Mitcham said.
“Now that I’ve done that I know I can compensate in the semi-final and hopefully I won’t be having the same problems.”
Mitcham, one of the few out gay athletes to be competing at the Olympics, has been struggling with an abdominal muscle problem for a while, but after putting it to the test in the run up to the Games, he has said he again feels confident about stepping out onto the diving board:
“I’ve been smashing myself for quite some time now, in a good way, training very hard and putting my abs through very rigorous training and the rest of my body as well. It’s not an issue for me now, mentally or otherwise.”
He also added that the lowest point of his injury problems was the feeling of pressure of being the reigning champion, which prompted a fear of failure and severely hindered him in his preparations.
“If I win gold #London 2012 I will dive off 10m naked to celebrate.”
Mitcham last won gold at the Beijing Games four years ago.
