Mexico’s medal haul at the Paris Games remains at two silvers and one bronze, but diver Osmar Olvera has given his country hope for its first gold in 2024 by qualifying for the 3-meter springboard finals.
The event will take place Thursday, starting at 7 a.m. Mexico City time.
Olvera, a 20-year-old diver from Mexico City who last week won a silver medal in the synchronized 3-meter springboard diving event, also fared well this week in the 3-meter springboard semifinals, finishing fourth among 25 competitors with a score of 463.75 points.
There will be 12 competitors in the finals, led by the top three finishers from the semifinals: Wang Zongyuan (537.85) of China, Xie Siyi (505.85) of China and Jack Laugher (467.05) of Great Britain.
Which means Olvera’s task won’t be easy: in this same event in the 2020 Tokyo Games, Siyi won the gold medal, Zongyuan was the silver medalist and Laugher took bronze.
Olvera competed alongside the trio in the Tokyo Games, but, at age 17, he was the youngest member of Mexico’s diving team and finished 14th in the 3-meter springboard semifinals, which failed to qualify him for the finals.
Mexico’s women Olympic divers keep progressing forward
Diving has been one of Mexico’s best sports at the 2024 Games. In the women’s 10-meter platform competition, both Gabriela Agúndez, 24, of La Paz, Baja California Sur, and Alejandra Orozco, 27, of Zapopan, Jalisco, made it to Tuesday’s final, finishing fifth and eighth, respectively.
On Wednesday, Aranza Vázquez and Alejandra Estudillo, each qualified for the women’s 3-meter springboard diving semifinals, to be held on Thursday. In the preliminaries, Vázquez, 21, from La Paz, finished third and Estudillo, 19 — born in Chiapas but raised in Nuevo León —was 17th, with the top 18 advancing to the semifinals.
Through Wednesday, Mexico’s only medals this year have been a silver won by Olvera, a silver won by 25-year-old Juan Manuel Celaya from Monterrey, Nuevo León, in men’s synchronized 3-meter diving; a silver won by 28-year-old Prisca Awiti in women’s judo in the 63-kg category; and a bronze in the women’s archery team competition.
In the archery event, Mexico beat the Netherlands 6-2 in the bronze-medal match behind the strong shooting of Ángela Ruiz of Saltillo, Coahuila, who just turned 18 on July 29; 29-year-old Alejandra Valencia of Hermosillo, Sonora; and 23-year-old Ana Vázquez of Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila.
Despite the promising start, Mexico lost 5-3 to China in the semifinals.
At the end of competition on Wednesday, Mexico and Armenia were tied for 55th place in the Olympics medals table with two silvers and one bronze each.
Although Mexico didn’t gain a medal in artistic swimming, Mexico’s five-woman squad made a big splash on the final day of the team competition on Wednesday, turning in an acrobatic routine that rated fifth among the 10 teams competing.
Combined with their scores from previous days in technical routine and free routine, the Mexican team — which hadn’t qualified for the Olympics since the 1996 Games in Atlanta — wound up in seventh place behind China, the United States, Spain, France, Japan and Canada.
Their routine on Wednesday proved to be a real crowd-pleaser at the Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis: it featured pre-Hispanic music tinged with electronica and colorful pink and green outfits that got plenty of attention.
Last year, Mexico’s artistic swimming team clashed with Ana Gabriela Guevara, the head of the National Commission for Physical Culture and Sport (Conade), over funding issues.
With reports from El Universal, El Economista and El País
