Fabriga dives for glory vs world’s best

BEIJING – Ranged against the finest divers, Ryan Rexel Fabriga hopes to make the performance of a lifetime before 16,000 spectators in the 10m platform diving event bringing down the curtains on the Philippines’ participation tonight in the Beijing Olympics.

Fabriga joins 30 qualifiers from the world Olympic qualifying event and continental competitions last year in the preliminaries starting at 7 p.m., hoping to give it his best performance in the country’s final show in the quadrennial competitions.

Fabriga will be the 15th and last participant from the Philippine contingent, 13 of which had been reduced to mere spectators or had gone home, while the 14th, taekwondo jin Toni Rivero is to compete at 10 this morning.

“The field is formidable and the Water Cube is so huge the water and people look very small, but I’m used to this because I already competed in Beijing,” said Fabriga, who earned the Beijing trip as a finalist in the Beijing Olympic qualifying at the Water Cube.

Increased poundage and recurring back injury could be the minus factors in Fabriga’s quest for a high score, but he said he is prepared to give it his best on his first Olympic appearance against the world’s best led by world, Olympic and Asian champions Huo Liang and Zhou Luxin of China, 14-year-old Briton Thomas Daley and German Sascha Klein.

“I have prepared well for my event and I hope I’ll perform well enough for my country,” said Fabriga.

Fabriga, who has trained under a Chinese coach during the last seven years, had prepared six dives which he hopes will score high enough to carry him to the 18-man semifinals and eventually to the 12-man finals of the high-profile competition to be televised worldwide and featuring the yet unbeaten Olympic, world, and Asian champions from China.

The six compulsory dives in the 10m platform diving are the forward, backward, reverse, inward, armstand and twisting dives.

In the forward dive, Fabriga will perform 3 1/2 somersaults in a pike position and will also do 3 1/2 somersaults in a tuck position in the backward position.

In the reverse dive, he opted for only 2 1/2 somersaults in a pike position but he hopes to be able to make a clean technical dive to make up for the lower degree of difficulty on this dive.

His inward dive will also be on a higher degree of difficulty on 3 1/2 somersaults in a tuck position.

In the armstand back dive, he will take off with his arms on the platform and take three somersaults in a tuck position.

The most difficult among the compulsory dives which will determine the winners in a close competition is the twisting back dive. In this dive, Fabriga will only try 1 1/2 somersaults with 1 1/2 twists in a pike position.

Each of the 30 participants will take turns in each of the compulsory dives with the top 18 best scorers overall advancing to the semifinals tomorrow at 10 a.m.and the top 12 fighting for the gold in the finals at 8 p.m.