The selection trials for the Australian Olympic Diving team kicked off Monday, as our Olympic hopefuls face off at the South Australian Aquatic Centre, in a bid to book their tickets to London.

Competing over three days, the cream of Australia’s diving crop will fight it out for one of ten spots on the team across six of the eight Olympic events.

The preliminaries and semi-finals for the Men’s and Women’s 3 metre, the Men’s and Women’s 10 metre, the Women’s 3 metre synchro and the Women’s 10 metre synchro take place on Monday, April 2, before the finals are held across April 3 and 4.

Australia has qualified two quota places for each of the four Women’s events and one quota place for the two Men’s individual events (3 metre and 10 metre). Australia was unable to qualify a quota spot in the men’s 10 metre and men’s 3 metre synchronised events.

Many of Australia’s Olympic hopefuls have recently returned from the FINA Diving World Cup held at London Aquatics Centre.

Seasoned Australian campaigners Melissa Wu and partner Alexandra Croak claimed fourth in the Women’s Platform synchro, an event they won gold in at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and silver at the 2011 World Championships. Wu was just 16 when she made her Olympic debut in Beijing and Croak is one of just 13 Australian Olympians to represent in more than one sport. She was an artistic gymnast competitor at Sydney 2000.

After recently taking out the Rostock Grand Prix in Germany, Ethan Warren continued his strong preparations for London 2012 after claiming fourth in the Men’s 3 metre, finishing only 0.15 off the bronze medal.

Beijing gold medallist, Matthew Mitcham just missed out on the final on the Men’s 10 metre platform after posting the fourth highest score in the Preliminary round. He was encouraged by his form and will look to build on that at this week’s Trials.

Dual bronze medallist and three-time Olympian Loudy Wiggins will be looking to make a successful return to the sport. Wiggins retired after missing selection to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 when she injured her calf at the Trials. Having only been back in training for less than a year, Wiggins was the leading Australian at the FINA World Cup, placing 14th in the 10m platform after just missing out on the finals.

The women’s 10 metre individual spots are expected to be the most hotly contested at the Trials.  

Following the trials the Australian team will be compete at two FINA Grand Prix events in North America before the successful divers for the London Olympics are formally announced on 29 May 2012 at the Sleeman Aquatic Centre in Brisbane.

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Matthew Bartolo
AOC