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Rio 2016: Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow win diving bronze medal

Posted: 9th August 2016 - 8:48am
Rio 2016: Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow win diving bronze medal

Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow have claimed Olympic bronze in the men's synchronised 10m platform – Britain’s first diving medal in Brazil and only the seventh ever in Games history.

Loughborough College student Goodfellow was making his Olympic debut and with Daley pipped Germany to third place to claim the medal.

The pair scored 444.45 while competition favourites Lin Yue and Chen Aisen from China won gold, with 496.98 and the USA’s David Boudia and Steele Johnson silver, with 457.11.

Daley and Goodfellow, who won European silver in May and who have been training together for ten months, were in medal contention from the beginning.

Joint third in the standings after round one, they remained in the bronze medal position following their second and third dives.

With two rounds to go they found themselves in fifth but they they moved back into third with a forward four-and-a-half-somersault dive described by BBC Sport expert Leon Taylor at the time as their "best of the day".

Diving last of the eight pairs and with a sixth round score of over 84 points needed, the duo leapt into the pool in celebration when the score of 89.64 came up.

"I was nervous. But when we first started we knew there would be pressure. And we knew we'd be the last divers to go.

“I tried to block everything else out and focus on my dives.

“Our fourth dive wasn’t amazing but towards the back end of our list we have a really high degree of difficulty.

“I knew our last two are our two real big ones and we’d have to nail them.

"We just kept our nerve and stayed in the moment,” said 19 year old Goodfellow.

The result sees 22-year old Daley become the first British diver to win multiple Olympic medals, having also claimed individual 10m platform bronze at London 2012.

“It was an agonising wait that felt like it was an eternity. We were stood there and knew we had done a good dive but were didn’t know if we’d done enough,” said Daley.

“We were just waiting and waiting with replay after replay, then all of a sudden the scores came up, I pounced on Dan and I don’t think he was quite ready for it and then before we knew it we were back in for a top bombing seventh dive.

“We knew we had a shot at winning a medal. We’ve only been diving together since October so we’re a new partnership.

“But since then we’ve won medals in every world event, World Series, European Championships. Back in the European Championships it was a similar situation going into the last round dive and the Germans pipped us by two points.

“We didn’t want to let that happen again. I said to Dan afterwards, don’t worry we’ll get them at the Olympics. And we did.”

Pictured: Tom Daley and Loughborough College’s Dan Goodfellow win Bronze in the Men’s Synchronised 10m Platform Final in Rio (Alex Whitehead/SWpix)