Divers claim Filipinos’ 41st gold medal

NAKHON RATCHASIMA – Rexel Fabriga and Jaime Asok twisted and somersaulted with awesome precision on their final dive and clinched the men’s synchronized 10m platform diving gold, the 41st and final gold of the Philippine contingent in the 24th Southeast Asian Games here.

The Filipino partners were trailing the Malaysian pair of Ahmad Pakhri and Bryan Lomas by two points going into the final dive and had to execute the sixth and final dive with a minimum margin of error to win the gold.

Fabriga and Asok did the back two-and-one-half somersault with one-and-one-half twists and made a near-perfect entry to score 78.54 points.

The Malaysians failed in the same routine, scoring only 64.26 to hand the Philippines the second gold at the close of the diving competitions at the Main Stadium Aquatics Center.

“I am very happy to win the gold again,” said Asok, 22. “I knew I had to win the gold. I just tried to psyche myself that I’ll just do my very best – and I did it.”

“When I lost the gold in the 10m platform yesterday I felt bad and I promised myself that I would do good this time,” said Fabriga, 23.

It was a titanic win for Fabriga and Asok, both from Davao and students at the TRACE College in Los Baños, Laguna where they trained for the SEA Games as they clinched it over the 17-year-old Lomas, the 2005 world junior diving champion and a qualifier for the Beijing Olympics.

This is the third gold medal in the 10m synchronized platform diving for Fabriga, who partnered with Asok also in winning the gold in 2003 and Kevin Kong to win it in Manila in 2005.

At the close of competitions, Malaysia garnered a frontrunning seven gold medals against three silver and three bronze medals while the Philippines had 2-4-1 counting the gold medal of Sheila Mae Perez in the 3m springboard. – Gerry Carpio