Paris 2024: Unexpected for Nur Dhabitah to commit major errors, says national diving technical director

KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 10): National diving technical director Bryan Nickson Lomas said he did not expect national diver Nur Dhabitah Sabri to commit major errors during the women’s 3 metre (m) springboard final at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France, yesterday.

Even though Nur Dhabitah’s performance was inconsistent during her third and fourth attempt, there were times when the 25-year-old had done better during practice sessions, he added.

“We did predict her getting a score of 280 points in Paris, even during simulations in United Kingdom, Nur Dhabitah achieved 272.80 points, but we didn’t expect such major errors to occur during the third and fourth dive in yesterday’s finals.

“Actually, in the preliminary and semi-finals, we could see some weak dives but there were no 40 or below scores and that’s still acceptable. If you wanna fight for top eight or medals, weak dives need to be good and if you want to be safe, you need to score 55 points and above, that’s Nur Dhabitah’s standard,” he said when contacted by Bernama.

On why the five-time Asian Games medallist did not shine in her third and fourth dives, Bryan pointed out that divers would actually have weak dives for those attempts.

“Usually, according to sequence, the first and second dives are to provide confidence to the athlete to score good points, but the third and fourth are for weak dives so it’s a bit gamble, while the last dive is to showcase the dive they are confident in scoring well.

“The dive order is one of the things to give an impression to judges. If the first and second dives are good then there is a potential, while weak dives (if successful) would give an even better impression to judges to gain better points,” he said.

Nur Dhabitah scored 244.80 points overall to finish 12th after five dives during the finals yesterday, starting off well with 63.00 and 60.00 points in the first and second dives, but scoring only 37.50 for her back 2½ somersault dive and her mistake during her reverse 2½ somersault dive resulted in a mere 28.50 points, and ending with an improved 55.80 points in her final dive at the Olympic Aquatic Centre in Paris.

Bryan nonetheless said that Nur Dhabitah showed improvement even though finishing last in the finals, pointing out that her performance was better than her 238.15 points at the 2024 World Aquatic Championship in Doha in February, which caused her to lose out on qualifying for the Olympics based on merit.

“To be honest, after Doha she looked less confident in terms of preparation, but in terms of preparation, including the final training camp in the United Kingdom, it was very good,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bryan said that national diver Bertrand Rhodict Lises had much to improve after his disappointing Olympic debut where he finished 25th out of 26 divers in the preliminary round of the men’s 10m platform event with a score of 313.70 points.

Bertrand should focus on fixing his training process and mental preparation, he said, but praised the Sarawak diver’s commitment in learning a new degree of difficulty of 2.6 and 3.7 in a short period.

“Maybe Bertrand was too focused on the new dive and took it easy with other dives, maybe that’s why errors occurred,” he added.

The Malaysian dive team ended their Paris Olympics campaign without winning any medals. – Bernama