New faces crowd podium on second day of 2022 Winter Senior National Diving Championships
There were two new faces on the top of the podium at the 2022 Winter Senior National Diving Championships taking place at the Shaw Centre in Saskatoon, SK on Saturday with Tazman Abramowicz of Calgary, AB winning the men’s 1-metre event, and Tanesha Lucoe of Victoria, BC winning the women’s platform event. This is the first senior national title for both athletes.
Abramowicz, who has been competing in the NCAA at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for the last few years and who will graduate this spring, led the field after the preliminaries, and then continued to dominate in the finals, taking the win with a total score of 416.75.
“I didn’t have a lot of expectations (coming into the meet) – I had just finished my season in the NCAA, so I came here to just try competing some new dives on 3m, see some old friends, and practice competing and have fun,” said Abramowicz whose only previous nationals medals are two bronze he won as junior.
When asked which dive he was most proud of today, he responded: “Today I think it was definitely my reverse two and a half tuck just because that’s a dive that I know I can do well and I know it’s one of my stronger dives – but the last few competitions I’ve had some struggles with my hurdle. So having a good hurdle, a decent takeoff and putting it out of my head – I was proud of that and happy that it went really well.”
Taking silver in the men’s 1m was yesterday’s 3m champion – Cédric Fofana of Montreal with a total score of 404.20, followed by Thomas Ciprick in third with a total score of 396.95.
It was a wide-open competition in women’s platform with both of Canada’s Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games representatives on platform – Caeli McKay of Montreal, QC and Celina Toth of Victoria, BC not competing. This enabled some young up-and-comers to climb onto the podium with 20-year-old Tanesha Lucoe, who just wrapped up her junior year competing in the NCAA with the University of Alabama, winning her first-ever national title with a total score of 316.65.
“I thought this would be a great opportunity to come off of my college season, and just use these nationals to showcase what I’ve been doing all year,” said Lucoe who hasn’t competed in Canada for over three years. “Coming back, I was a little nervous, but I think my biggest goal was just to come in here and dive and show Tommy (Olympic coach Tommy McLeod), what I’ve been working on.”
Capturing the silver medal on platform was Éloïse Bélanger of Montreal, QC with a total score of 285.60, and 16-year-old Kate Miller of Ottawa taking the bronze with a score of 284.45.
Competition wraps up tomorrow with the women’s 3-metre springboard, and men’s 10m platform starting at 10am MT.
Results: https://diving.ca/winter-nationals-2022/