Tanya Watson, Ireland’s first Olympic female diver, has qualified for the Tokyo 2020 10m Platform Semi-Final.
The 19-year-old was pitted against 29 of the world’s best in the preliminaries with the top 18 dives progressing to the semi-finals. Watson produced a consistent performance throughout the round to score a total of 289.40 points across her five dives.
This saw her finish 16th overall and qualify for tomorrow's semi-final. The final will also take place tomorrow.
The semi-finals begin at 2am Irish time at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
Tanya Watson is through to the semi-finals! The Irish diver finished with an overall score of 289.40 for a 16th place finish. #Tokyo2020 #swimming #RTESport
📺 Watch – https://t.co/hHD01dUcII
📱 Updates - https://t.co/aKaz5gMVU9 pic.twitter.com/jdKpmSOVNH— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) August 4, 2021
Watson said: “I feel great, and just excited to go out there again and do my dives and get through again tomorrow. My first dive was pretty good for me, everything was consistent, so all my dives were on the head.
"My plan into the semi-finals is that I personally want to enjoy it again. I did really good diving today, so I’m really excited to find that again. Also tomorrow, I want to work on my entries into the water.”
It was a solid performance from Watson who performed dives that ranged in difficulty from 2.8 to 3.2.
In her first, she a back 2½ somersaults, 1½ twists with a difficulty level of 3.2. She received a score of 62.4 which put her in 13th place early on.
In her final dive of the morning, Watson completed an inward 3½ somersaults, which had a difficulty of 3.2 to finish out the preliminaries as the 16th ranked diver.
The 19-year-old became the first Irish female diver to qualify for the Olympic Games when she scored 271.85 in the preliminary round of the 10m Platform at the FINA Diving World Cup in Tokyo. This saw her booked her Olympic Qualification.
Primarily based at the Southampton Diving Academy in England under the expert eye of Lindsey Fraser, Watson has spent much of her time training at National Centre (Dublin) under Ireland’s National Head Coach for Diving, Damian Ball, and alongside Oliver Dingley and Clare Cryan. Watson first competed for Ireland in 2018 where she finished 5th at the Youth Olympics.
