Canadian youngster eyes Beijing gold
At the age of 22, Canadian diver Alexandre Despatie is already a two-time Olympian with one silver medal to his name. And with the Beijing Olympics only five months away, the young springboard world champion has set his eyes on his third Olympic Games and this time he's going for gold.
"The Olympic gold is my dream. I'm going to work as hard as I can to make sure that I try to achieve what I'm doing," Despatie said at the World Cup in Beijing last month.
In the men's 3m springboard at this year's World Cup, Despatie only finished fifth.
But his World Cup failure didn't decrease his confidence and he is expecting a strong comeback in August.
"It's not the end of the world. I need the bad days to enjoy the good ones," he said after the competition.
"I had to go back home, train very hard to make sure that I don't make these mistakes again. I will train much harder to make sure that this kind of mistake won't happen again."
Born into a family very fond of sports, Despatie picked up diving when he was five years old.
"My family is very involved in sports. Diving just came to me," he recalled. "I was diving in my home in Canada and my parents sent me out for diving classes. That's how it started."
It didn't take very long for him to show his talents.
At the 1998 Junior World Championships, a 13-year-old Despatie claimed gold in men's 1m and 3m springboard and 10m platform.
In the same year, at the Commonwealth Games, he stepped onto the highest podium in men's 10m platform, becoming the youngest to win a diving title in international competition.
"Diving is my life. I'm in love with the sport," Despatie told China Daily. "I always love it. I don't know why. I guess it's everything I want and everything I need.
"To me, competing, traveling and diving are what I love. It's not heavy on me. It's very very fun. That's what I love to do."
But it won't be a cakewalk for the youngster to Beijing gold.
At his first Olympics in Sydney 2000, a crucial mistake in the fourth round cost him the Olympic medal as he finished fourth (although it was still the best result a Canadian diver had achieved at the Olympics in 68 years).
Three years later, Despatie reached the world's top by winning a gold medal at the 2003 World Championships in 10m platform, beating China's diving stars Tian Liang and Hu Jia.
But he again failed to snag the Olympic gold medal at the 2004 Athens Games, finishing fourth on the platform, and was beaten by China's Peng Bo on the springboard, winning silver.
For the Beijing Games, Despatie plans to compete in the men's 3m single, synchronized springboard, and the 10m platform.
"I'm going to be working on the same dives for the Olympics to make sure that when I come back here, I'm 100 percent ready. I'm working on those (dives) to get comfortable and to make sure I'm as comfortable as I can with them for the Olympics," he said.
(China Daily 03/04/2008 page23)
