The Canadian diving duo of Meaghan Benfeito and Roseline Filion have taken home the bronze in the women’s 10-metre synchronized diving event.
They made it onto the podium with a score of 336.18, behind China’s Ruolin Chen and Huixia Liu and Malaysia’s Jun Hoong Cheong and Pandelela Rinong Pamg.
“It was crazy. We knew we needed a really a good dive on the last one to have a chance at the podium,” Filion said. “We went up there really calm, looked at each other and told each other, ‘We got this’, and we ended up with a great last dive.”
Benfeito and Filion won the bronze medal in this event at the 2012 London Olympics. They have consistently been ranked second-best in the world over the past year.
“The feeling was amazing. We’ve worked tirelessly since London to get this medal,” Benfeito explained. “We missed on our fourth dive but we got it back on the fifth. To see that three flash across the board was amazing.”
It’s been a rough year for Filion though. In December 2015, she broke a bone in her right ankle during training. She had been doing backflips on dry land and missed the mat, landing hard on concrete instead. This affected her training during the year.