Diving Grand Prix in Madrid, Spain

After Perth I was heading off to Madrid to compete at the Spanish Grand Prix event. Other team members included: Anabelle, Olivia, Rachel, Jaele, Ethan, Kate, Hui and Jinlan. We found out on the plane trip over that Spain had won the World Cup, which was really exciting as everyone was in a good mood.

The pool here is unique as it has a glass dome over the diving pool, which can make diving interesting at certain parts of the day when the sun is shining in your face!

We had training Monday to Thursday, competition was Friday to Sunday. On Thursday we had the morning off training to look around the city. We went to Gran Via which is a famous street in Madrid, the buildings in and around the street were beautiful. I only bought a few souvenirs.

Friday was my big day of diving! At 10am I had 3m prelims, I did four good dives and one really lousy one, but I finished in 7th place, with 278 points, so I made it through to semi's. Semi's were at 1pm, six divers in each semi with top three going through to finals. I did five decent dives to finish in 2nd place, with 300 points, and therefore make finals. I was able to have some lunch and relax before heading back to the pool at 4pm. Finals for 3m were at 6pm, I was diver number one of the six girls. I dove quite well scoring 311 points and finishing in 5th place.

I had 30 minutes to get myself psyched up for 10m synchro with Anabelle. We only had 15 minutes of training which was only enough time for 3 dives off 10m. Competition started at 8pm and there were 6 teams and we were number 2 after the Ukraine girls. Anabelle and I were a little bit off with our diving, needing to be cleaner on the water., however we did hit all our dives. We won the competition scoring 308 points, 13 points clear on 2nd place Canadian and France in third.

On Saturday I caught the bus and headed out to the city center. I went all over central Madrid including Puerta Del Sol, Plaza Mayor and the very beautiful Parque del Retiro. I had an awesome day out and about, and I finally had my chocolate con churro! And I also found the most amazing Spanish deli.

On Sunday we watched the Women's 10m event, as Anabelle had made the finals. After the diving was over we had a few hours to wait. So Rachel and I headed to the Parque del Retiro, we hired a row boat, which was so much fun!

Commonwealth Games Trials

On the 8^th I had 3m, there were 6 girls invited to compete in this event. We had preliminaries and finals, do 5 dives each time, however the scores for all ten dives count towards the end result. After preliminaries I was in 2^nd place with a score of 338.85. I was very happy with my finals, scoring 70+ points on each dive for a new PB score of 365.20! My total score for prelims and finals was 704.05, Sharleen was in 2^nd place with 703.80 – a very close result with only 0.25 being the difference.

The team was officially announced on the 9^th. The Australian team will consist of 12 divers - 7 girls and 5 boys. Team members include: Bree Cole, Sharleen Stratton, Anabelle Smith, Olivia Wright, Jaele Patrick, Alex Croak, Melissa Wu, Ethan Warren, Grant Nel, James Conner, Matthew Mitcham and Scott Robertson.