Spendolini-Sirieix sixth in high quality platform contest

Having booked her place in the Women’s 10m Platform showdown with a superb semi-final display 24 hours earlier, Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix had the honour of ascending the steps to dive tenth out of twelve divers in the final – with the order running in reverse of each athletes respective qualification ranking.

Opening with a dive in the armstand position, Spendolini-Sirieix got a great take off to drive energy through the effort and put 76.80 points on the board – an exact replica of both her prelims and semi-final score on the dive.

🇬🇧 Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix gets her bid for 10m platform gold under way! #Olympics #Paris2024 #BBCOlympics pic.twitter.com/cGnlWO7IhO

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 6, 2024

Across the middle three rounds the medal contest unfortunately just began to edge away from Andrea’s grasp, as she produced a set of solid consecutive 60+ point dives which just fell short of the sharpness required to convince the judges to award the higher marks needed to stay at pace with the top three positions.

However, the Olympic synchro bronze medallist delivered a grandstand finish to close off her individual list in Paris, going over 80 points for the first time with a single dive in Paris. Her Back 2½ Somersaults 1½ Twists Pike (5253B) equalled the top ranked dive of any diver in the fifth round as she completed her competition on 345.50 points to place sixth overall.

“I came here today grateful to be alive and to have this experience – today wasn’t my day but I still give glory to God because there was some great things in there that I’ve really worked on,” said Spendolini-Sirieix.

“I’m not upset about my performance or where I came, my competitors did better than me today. It just pushes me to be hungrier and means I’ve got a lot more that I need to work on.

“I feel like there is a lot of struggle that people don’t see that we push through silently, and having my family here has really changed my experience [compared to Tokyo]. Not getting the medal today doesn’t take away from the medal that I have received and the achievements that I’ve had the past three years. I feel I’ve grown as a human being not just as an athlete, and I think that is the most valuable thing that diving has ever given me.

“I’m just so thankful for the support that I’ve received and for the community I’ve built around diving – I couldn’t be here without that, and I’m so happy that I can bring home that synchro medal to my family because they deserve it more than I do.”

The Men’s 3m Springboard campaign for Jack Laugher and Jordan Houlden started earlier in the day with comfortable qualification through the preliminaries stage.

Houlden opened his series with a polished Forward 2½ Somersaults 2 Twists Pike (5154B) for 76.50 points to slot in at fourth on the leaderboard – a position the Sheffield diver did not then deviate from across all six rounds.

Teammate, Laugher, went just one position better to place himself seeded third going in to the semi-final. The Rio 2016 silver and Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist in this event produced the equal-highest individual dive score of 96.90 points in the fifth round, landing his Forward 4½ Somersaults Tuck (109C) to judges acclaim.

Jack Laugher and Jordan Houlden return to action for the Men’s 3m Springboard semi-final at 9am on Wednesday, with Grace Reid and Yasmin Harper then on the boards for Team GB from 2pm in the Women’s 3m Springboard preliminaries. You can find details of all the upcoming aquatics action from Paris 2024 through our What’s On? Page.

Where can I watch?

The BBC will be covering the majority of the Games across BBC One and Two, the BBC Red Button and BBC iPlayer. You can find their coverage schedule by clicking here.

Discovery+/Eurosport will also be broadcasting every minute of the Olympic Games but these channels require a subscription fee.