DIVING: The first contingent of the Australian Diving team arrived in Rio late on Wednesday night (local time) and held their first training session at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre in Rio Thursday where they were surprisingly greeted by tunes from Australian band Hilltop Hoods.

“Our flight was very good, everything went smoothly, most of us got some sleep and we only had a short layover in Santiago, Chile on the way and we are happy to be here in Rio,” said Olympic debutant Grant Nel.

“Today’s sessions were pretty light, we had a weights session this morning and went to the pool in the afternoon for some dry land work and when I went out on the boards one of the Hilltop Hoods songs came on so it was pretty cool to have an Aussie hip hop song playing whilst we were practicing”.

This is the second visit to the Olympic venue for the majority of the Australian Team who participated in the Olympic Test Event in February.

“We were here for the Test Event earlier in the year and it is great to see that they have made a few changes, the facility looks amazing, the staff here have obviously worked hard and done a really great job,” said Nel.

“We will continue our training over the next days mixed with some good rest and recovery to help with the jet lag, slowly getting back into working out all our dives and competition lists in preparation for the start of the competition”.

Nel, Domonic Bedggood, James Connor, Maddison Keeney and Anabelle Smith will be joined in Rio by the remaining members of the diving team on Sunday, with the competition scheduled to begin on August 7 – the second full day of competition at the Games.

Jo Banning
olympics.com.au