Budapest screen in 3 mt springboard
Havana, June 28 (JIT) - Without realizing the difficult dream of a final, Cuban Carlos Escalona has reasons to be happy after his debut this Monday in the individual springboard from three meters in the diving tournament of the Fina World Championship in Budapest, Hungary.
The 24-year-old Santiago native came in seventeenth in the morning preliminaries, and a few hours later he showed a good face again despite not being included in the top 12 of the competition.
"The three-and-a-half reverse jumping went wrong for him, and although he then made up positions, it was not possible for him to advance," said national commissioner Milagros González to JIT, who, rather than regretting what happened, praised the performance of a young man with much less experience than most of those involved in the event.
Escalona completed 327.05 units in the semifinal, valid for 16th place. That is his best performance at this level, since three years ago in South Korea he had finished in a very discreet 53rd place.
Now she has to compete in the individual one-meter springboard, which was her official event for this competition, but she had to replace Laydel Domínguez (suffering from covid-19 since her arrival in the Hungarian capital).
For the three-meter final, the Chinese Zhongyuan Wang, Olympic silver medalist in Tokyo 2020, and Yuan Cao, who dominated the individual platform in the Japanese capital and now tests himself on the springboard, are the favorites.
Generally, the three-meter springboard is the event with the highest participation and very even level in international competitions, this time has not been the exception and the greatest proof is that 55 competitors participated in the preliminary phase.
One of the good news for America was the fourth place in the semifinals for the Colombian Luis Felipe Uribe (411.70 points), with only 20 years old and few results in the elite, but grew in the double day on Monday.
Closing the day was the women's individual platform final, in which China's Yuxi Chen retained her 2019 crown.
Cuba will return to the pool on Tuesday with Luis Gustavo Cañabate and Carlos Daniel Ramos for the synchronized men's platform.
