Calgary: four Canadian divers advance to finals

It was another smooth day for the home country as Calgary’s Caeli McKay, Victoria’s Celina Toth, Ville Mont-Royal’s Philippe Gagné, and Terrebonne’s François Imbeau-Dulac advanced to a Sunday final at the Repsol Sport Centre in Calgary.

There was a touch of surprise in the women’s 10m platform, as three-time Olympic medallist, Meaghan Benfeito, was bumped out of contention in the preliminaries by Toth and McKay.

Only two per country are allowed to advance to the semis. Toth was fourth in the prelims, McKay fifth, and Benfeito sixth.

“Today was definitely a weird day,” said Toth, “The prelim was a little bit all over the place for all of us and definitely not what we were expecting but to come out of that on top and I was kind of all in my head the whole time and Canada Cup kind of gets to me but it was good to still know that I can put stuff down even when I’m feeling off and then step it up for the semi.”

Toth, 27, went on to win semifinal A with 312.10 points, while McKay, 19, took semifinal B with 302.55 points.

In the men’s 3m springboard, Olympians Gagné and Imbeau-Dulac also matched each other’s placing.

Gagné, 21, was second in semifinal B with 431.45 points while Imbeau-Dulac, 28, was the runner-up in semifinal A with 428.45 points.

Thomas Ciprick, 16, made his FINA Diving Grand Prix debut and finished 17th in prelims, “It’s my first time competing at this level I think I handled myself really well, I did a few good dives, it was a very long competition very hard to keep myself composed during the dives because there’s almost a half hour break between each dive,” said Ciprick, who began his diving career with Dive Calgary before moving to Montreal with his family.

“I had to find a way to shut down for a bit and be able to get warmed up before my next dive but I think I handled it really well for my first time out there.”

Québec’s Cédric Fofana was 27th in the prelims and didn’t advance either.

Saturday marks the first day of finals at the Canada Cup with medals handed out in the mixed 10m synchro, the men’s 3m synchro, the women’s 3m, the women’s 10m synchro, and the men’s 10m.

Full results can be found here