Courtesy: USA Diving
CALGARY, Canada – Day one of the FINA Calgary Grand Prix began with Team USA competing in the women’s 3-meter and the men’s platform preliminaries and semifinals. Emma Ivory-Ganja (The Woodlands, Texas/Austin, Texas) clinched a spot in the women’s 3-meter finals after finishing third in her semifinal group. Carolina Sculti (Rye, N.Y./Stanford, Calif.), who also competed in the same semifinal group as Ivory-Ganja, placed sixth and completed competition 11th overall. Ben Bramley (Wellesley, Mass./West Lafayette, Ind.) finished sixth in his men’s platform semifinal group and 11th overall.
The Canada Cup runs according to FINA’s tournament format with the top-12 divers from the preliminary session advancing to two semifinal groups with six divers in each, and the top three divers from each group advancing to the finals. Semifinal groups were comprised by divers ranked by either 12-10-8-6-4-2 or 11-9-7-5-3-1 following the men’s preliminaries. No nation can have more than two athletes qualify for the semifinals.
Ivory-Ganja scored 270.05 points in Thursday’s semifinals to seal her spot at third place and third overall, just half a point behind Mexico’s Melany Hernandez and 53.05 points behind Canada’s Jennifer Abel. The Texas native’s two best dives, a front 2 ½ somersaults with 1 twist in the first round and a back 2 ½ pike in the fourth round, scored 58.50 points each. Ivory-Ganja will compete for Team USA in the women’s 3-meter finals on Saturday, April 6, at 4:59 pm ET. Sculti, who led the American women in the preliminaries, struggled throughout the semifinals and scored 236.00 points. Despite placing 12th with 242.10 points in the preliminaries, Bridget O’Neil (Southlake, Texas) was unable to advance to the semifinals because Ivory-Ganja and Sculti placed ahead of the 2018 Youth Olympic bronze medalist.
In the men’s platform semifinal, Bramley finished competition with 345.15 points. The Massachusetts native began competition strong, but slipped in the final two rounds due to missed dives. Huang Bowen of China led the Semifinal B group with 490.95 points, while Rafael Quintero of Puerto Rico finished second with 391.90 points. China’s Wang Zewei finished 24.60 points behind Quintero to clinch the last spot of the finals.
The Calgary Grand Prix continues Friday at 12 pm ET with Greg Duncan (Oakton, Va./West Lafayette, Ind.) and Jacob Fielding (Los Angeles, Calif./Columbus, Ohio) competing in the men’s 3-meter preliminaries. Abigail Knapton (Omaha, Neb./Lincoln, Neb.) and Ali Watson (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) will contend in the women’s platform preliminaries at 3:53 pm ET. The men’s 3-meter semifinals will be held at 5:52 pm ET, while the women’s platform semifinals will follow at 7:57 pm ET.
