By Pierre and Christiane Despatie

Today, Alexandre participated in the finals of the 3m synchronized diving event with his partner Arturo Miranda. We were at the pool to encourage them. The benches were full and there was a lot of ambiance!

Alexandre and Arturo finished in 5^th place. After three dives, they were 3^rd but they made some mistakes in the next dives and they felt to fifth place.

Alexandre was disappointed with that result. I was sad for Arturo because it was his first and last time at the Olympic Games. Arturo is 37 years old and he was the oldest diver in the event. He started diving at an international level in 1984 – the same year that Alexandre was born! For Alexandre, it was important to be there and to give the chance to his friend and partner to live that experience. There is no doubt that Alex would have liked to win a medal, but with his injury this spring, they did not have a lot of time to train together. This may explain why they experienced some synchronization difficulties during the competition.

Now Alexandre has to put this event aside. He must continue training and concentrate all his efforts and energies on the individual event. Even if he was disappointed with his first event, this result will probably not interfere with the next competition. And that is just what Alexandre told Jacinthe Taillon from Radio-Canada after the event:

“The synchronised and the individual events are very different. At least this permits me to get a sense of these Olympic Games and see crowd’s reaction. It is very powerful and strong. I will try to use that to my advantage for the individual event.”

We will continue to support Alexandre for the rest of the Olympics. The preliminaries for the 3m individual event will being August 18 at 7:00 PM (7:00 AM in Montreal) and we will be following him.