GBDF Summer Masters 2005
10th/11th September, Manchester Aquatics Centre
The Cambridge Dive Team provided a contingent of five divers for the GBDF Summer Masters in Manchester. It was a generally successful trip for the Cambridge divers, and again raises the profile of the club in Masters diving circles.
The Summer Masters competition saw the introduction of a new trail format for the open springboard competitions, where each event is split into two sets of four dives. This meant that each springboard competition would take place at the start and the end of the day. The springboard competitions were again just that, with each one being a combination of one and three metre boards. This did not apply for the novices, where there were separate one metre and three metre competitions. Also for this meeting several of the age groups were combined, typically with 16-39 being one band and 40+ being the other. This obviously increased the number of divers in each competition, and certainly saved the organisers having to buy as many medals!
Saturday
The Saturday was taken up with springboard competitions for women and highboard for men. The first event of the day was the first half of the womens open springboard competition. After the first four dives, Cambridge diver Emily Manktelow led, with Kyle Trieber in ninth and Ulrike Lange in fourteenth. Their final results appeared some time later in the day. Emily finished the event in second place with a very respectable score of 316.00 points; Kyle in sixth with 269.70 and Ulrike, after an unfortunate back one-and-a-half, seventeenth with 185.25.
The next event sporting a Cambridge diver, and the last event of the day, was the mens open platform, where Richard Bowers scored 149.65 to finish in seventh place.
Sunday
The Sunday was the reverse of the Saturday, seeing the women on the platforms and the men on the springboards.
Throughout the weekend, there were also novice competitions taking place. The first event of the Sunday sporting a Cambridge diver was the womens 16-29 novice one metre. Georgina Sawyer, in her first competition, scored a very respectable 134.85 to claim sixth place in this event. An encouraging start, we're looking forward to Georgina extending her list to the other boards for the next competition.
The next event was the first half of the mens open springboard competition. The initial four dives went well, with Tom Lyons in seventh place and Richard in ninth. This was Tom's first competition as a Cambridge diver (though he has a long history in the sport) and we welcome him to the team.
Before the men completed their competition, we had the womens open highboard competition. This was won by our own Emily with a score of 214.65 points; Ulrike was next in seventh place with 169.85, closely followed by Kyle in eighth and 169.40.
The last event of the competition was the finale of the mens springboard. This went both ways for the Cambridge boys: Tom improved his position to sixth and a score of 284.65, whereas Richard dropped to thirteenth and 216.60 points, thanks mainly to a disastrous back one-and-a-half off the three metre that, in a fair world, should have won splat of the weekend. Some consolation was to be had in that, if it's going to go wrong, do it in style and soak the recorders' desk!
The next competition for the Masters team is the Winter Masters in November.
Full results can be found on the GBDF web site.
Posted 23/09/2005.