Diving: Poor fourth dive costs Daley and Waterfield bronze

Tom Daley & Pete Waterfield

Tom Daley and Pete Waterfield were left shell-shocked after missing out on bronze by slither in the men’s synchronised 10 metre platform diving.

A poor fourth dive out of the six rigorously scrutinised manoeuvres ended up the defining line between a medal and nothing, with one horror-dive after their best of the evening left them fourth by just 9.18 points.

A fantastic third dive looked to have set Daley and Waterfield up for a place on the podium with nines and 9.5s throughout contributing to a superb score of 91.08 for their back 3.5 somersaults - taking them on to 203.88 overall and lying in first place.

But diving is a cruel sport, even when you manage to avoid colliding with the board, and a disastrous reverse 3.5 somersault tuck saw the 18-year-old Daley and his 31-year-old partner drop straight to fourth with the glitch-laden manoeuvre yielding them just 71.28 points – and they couldn’t claw their way back.

"If you miss a dive in this kind of field, you're out," Daley said. "We did pretty well to try and maintain a fourth place and being so close to a medal is tough. It was just not our day today, but hopefully we will come back stronger in the individual [10m platform, which takles place on Friday week]."

Daley took consolation from the fact that their final score would have won a medal four years ago in Beijing. But Waterfield wasn't in the mood for consolation. "Fourth is the worst place to finish. I would rather finish last because at least you know you have missed every dive," he said.

Chinese pair Yuan Cao and Yanquan Zhang took gold with a huge score of 486.78 and reminding the rest why they dominate just another of the many Olympic events that has seen them rise quickly to the top of the overall medal board.

Mexican pair Ivan Garcia Navarro and German Sanchez Sanchez went for a high tariff on their dives and it paid off after they took silver following a sluggish start, with three faultless final showings seeing them overtake the Great Britains, Americans and impressive Cubans.

USA duo Nicholas McCrory and David Boudia took bronze at 463.47 with Cuban pair Jose Antonio Guerra and Jeinkler Aguirre narrowly behind the Brits in fifth. Russia’s Ilya Zakharov and Victor Minibaev finished in sixth placed with German pair Patrick Hausding and Sascha Klein and Ukrainians Oleksandr Bondar and Oleksandr Gorshkovozov rounding off the top eight.

Great Britain take historic men's team bronze
Great Britain trying to turn silver into gold
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Grainger and Watkins break Olympic record in double sculls
Bad day for Ben Ainslie
Robson and Watson advance for Britain
Zoe Smith rocks with British record
Medals table

Lyall Thomas

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