Queen of Europe, Tania Cagnotto captures 19th gold
Italy’s Tania Cagnotto took a 28-27 ‘lead’ on the all-time medal table at the Europeans over Germany’s Patrick Hausding by clinching the 3m title with ease on Saturday. Ukraine added another gold to their impressive tally in diving (3-2-3) by winning the mixed 10m synchro ahead of the Brits and that puts them atop in the diving medal table (GB has 2-4-3) with one day to go.
Tania Cagnotto has become the most decorated diver in the history of the Europeans by clinching her 28th medal in the event’s history, 19 of them are gold. It’s interesting that among the 19 titles Cagnotto has amassed, this is only her 3rd gold in the 3m event – she had 2 from 10m (her first two titles, indeed), 7 from 1m and further 7 from 3m synchro. The previous two 3m wins came in 2009 and in 2015 at the stand-alone diving Europeans so this was the first time that Cagnotto was able to win this individual event at the ‘big’ Europeans.
She came up with a balanced performance, began with two 70+ pointers and didn’t make any big mistake thereafter. Ukraine’s Anastasiia Nedobiga, winner of the prelims, was ahead of her after two rounds but bowed out of contention in the third through a disastrous attempt. Other rivals also had smaller errors here and there while Cagnotto didn’t succumb to the pressure and saved her best to the last round by showing the best dive of the final, the only one gaining over 80 points with 9.0s and 9.5s in the mix. Her winning margin (30 points) mirrored the difference between the respective performances, Cagnotto was the only one in the field with three out of five dives over 70 points (one over 80), while in the top six only two other 70+ attempts were recorded altogether.
Uschi Freitag brought some joy to her ‘new’ but native country, the Netherlands, the former German athlete clinching the silver, the first diving medal for the Dutch in almost 30 years. The hosts also had a fine day, the hunt for the bronze turned into an in-house competition between Grace Reid and Rebecca Gallantree. Reid edged out her British team-mate by 5.30 points (and was really close to the second place, she trailed only 2.05 points to Freitag).
The mixed 10m event’s premiere couldn’t have been any more thrilling and tighter. After the penultimate round the top three stood within 5.16 points, with the Ukrainians leading the race. And Iuliia Prokopchuk and Maksym Dolgov kept their calm and the top position in the last round as they managed to produce their best dive upon the last attempt, indeed the best of the final for 77.76 points. This was Prokopchuk’s second gold after coming first in the 10m individual event, while Dolgov had a bronze from the men’s 10m synchro.
The Brits, Georgia Ward and Matthew Lee did the second best (75.84) in the fifth round and earned the silver, while the Russians managed to overtake the Italian pair in the very last round, so Yulia Timoshinina and Nikita Shleikher captured the bronze, ahead of Noemi Batki and Maicol Verzotto – it was quite tight, the duos were separated by 3.07 points.
For detailed results please visit LEN’s renewed website: www.len.eu
Direct link: http://len.eu/?p=4378
Press release from LEN, photos courtesy of Deepbluemedia
