Benfeito and Filion win bronze at diving World Series
Benfeito and Filion win bronze at diving World Series
LONDON – Olympic bronze medallists Meaghan Benfeito of Montreal and Roseline Filion of Laval, Que., earned their best score this season on the FINA World Series diving circuit to win the bronze medal in the women’s 10-m synchro event on Friday.
World champions Chen and Huixia Liu of China saw the competition close the gap on their dominance but they still prevailed for gold at 337.14 for their third victory this season.
The table was also set for a big battle for gold at this summer’s Commonwealth Games. Sarah Barrow and Tonia Couch of Britain won the silver at 321.24 and Benfeito and Filion followed at 316.11.
“The quality of our individual dives was much better than at the first two stops on the World Series,” said Benfeito. “We had struggled with our compulsory dives earlier this season and after we did them well today it gave us a lot of confidence.”
The pair had not competed since the previous World Series stop last month in Dubai.
“We did a lot of work on our entries in training,” she said. “That’s the biggest area we need to improve to catch the Chinese teams.”
Filion said it was important to start a new stretch of competitions with a positive result.
“We had a busy period this winter so it was nice to get back to training and work on the areas we needed to improve,” she said. “There were some little errors but it was a close competition and we had a solid gap on the fourth place finishers.”
In the World Series standings for women’s 10-m synchro, the Chinese lead at 81 points followed by the Canadians, who have a silver and two bronze, at 66.
On women’s three-metre synchro, world champions Tingmao Shi and Minxia Wu of China are also three-for-three scoring 332.40 for the gold. Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dalpe of Italy were second at 306.90 and Hannah Starling and Rebecca Gallantree of Britain took the bronze at 302.88.
The British edged world championship bronze medallists Jennifer Abel of Laval and Pamela Ware of Beloeil, Que., by a mere 0.24 points. The Canadians fell behind early but nailed their final two dives to nearly sneak into the medal picture.
The Chinese lead the World Series standings at 81 points followed by the Italian pair at 63 and Abel and Ware at 57.
Abel and Ware compete Saturday on women’s individual three-metre.
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