Diving: Thomas is buoyant on board

By DAVID LEGGAT

Teenage diver Anna Thomas is certain she will be up for the challenge when she starts her second - and preferred - event at the Manchester Aquatics Centre tonight.

The 18-year-old Auckland-based student, the first New Zealand competitor to dip her toes into Commonwealth Games competition yesterday, reached the semifinals of the one-metre springboard event.

She recorded 214.38 points, just shy of a personal best but still 31 points short of qualifying for what was a world-class six-woman final. However, the experience was priceless.

The first gold medal of the Games went to Russian-born Australian Irina Lashko, who moved ahead of Canada's world champion Blythe Hartley with her penultimate dive and won with a score of 302.82.

England's Jane Smith picked up the bronze.

Affected by nerves in the morning preliminaries, Thomas, the youngest diver in the field, improved greatly in the afternoon semifinals. Far from being disappointed at missing a place in the final, she is sure she will be the better for the day.

"It's the biggest competition I've had and I was nervous," she said.

"But it built my confidence heaps and I'm going to be much better for the three-metre springboard competition.

"My goal was to reach over 200. My personal best is about 230, but the judging here is probably a bit stricter than at smaller competitions."

And the atmosphere, walking into the arena, being introduced to the crowd? "Really wicked."

To put the strength of the competition into context, Lashko, a 29-year-old mother who took out Australian citizenship three years ago, has won two Olympic silver medals; Hartley set the world record at last year's world championships in Fukuoka.

Thomas is benefiting from working with national coach Steven Tsu, assistant coach with the powerful Chinese team through the 1980s. His credentials include steering one of his proteges to the Olympic silver medal in Los Angeles in 1984.

Tsu, 40, is a tough taskmaster, more into having the swimmers figure out their problems themselves than wrapping a consoling arm round the shoulders.

"He doesn't comfort you, he makes you do it by yourself, deal with your dives by yourself," Thomas said.

"I found it quite hard at the beginning, but I realise it has helped heaps with my confidence."

Just how much is likely to be seen in the course of the next two years, leading up to the Athens Olympic Games.

Diving has high hopes for a young group of athletes, most of whom will contest the world junior championships in Aachen, Germany, next month.

Zimbabwe-born Shaye Boddington, just 16, but counted out on red-tape grounds by the Commonwealth Games Federation this time round, Caitlin White, just 14, Natasha Vruink, 16, and Thomas are the flag-bearers of diving's push for greater prominence on the world stage. But these things take time.

"You can't expect a coach to come in and turn things round in about six months," section manager Luvaine McDonald said.

The tricky part for diving is that to advance you have to compete internationally as often as possible. That means going to grand prix events, and that takes money.

"We're always limited on funding," McDonald said. "Parents have to try to raise money to get the kids to events."

The Academy of Sport has given a financial helping hand and sponsors are getting on board.

But just like prospering from Tsu's quality coaching regime, it doesn't happen overnight. The sights are set on next year's world championships in Barcelona, the World Cup in January 2004 in Athens, and finally the Olympics that year.

There is a belief that two synchro-diving combinations - Thomas and Boddington in the three-metre and White and Vruink for the platform event, both of which are on the world championship programme - have real potential.

But it is a case of taking small steps to reach the big objective, much as Thomas found out yesterday.

Full coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/manchester2002

Commonwealth Games info and related links