Rio Olympics Blog — Day Eighteen: Diving off the deep end

Always expect the unexpected.

After an uneventful morning/early afternoon, I headed over to the diving stadium for the men’s 3-meter springboard semifinal to cover Matt Hixon for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Like on Sunday, I encountered no issues at all getting into the venue, the tabled press area and the mixed zone.

The event itself was pretty eventful (pun not intended). The stadium is outdoors and open to all sorts of weather conditions. The round started off perfectly, with sunny skies and calm wins. But as soon as Hixon completed his first dive, the winds kicked up to what I estimate was 10-15 mph and clouds rolled in. The divers struggled to adjust and at least two divers hit the water nearly horizontal. I’m not a diving expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what they planned to do.

But Hixon coped pretty well with the conditions. I as I wrote in the 700-word recap for the Gazette, Hixon was able to mentally power through the poor conditions to finish the round in 10th, well ahead of the cutoff for the semifinals. He wasn’t the greatest interview, giving me couple word answers no matter how I phrased the question, but it was enough to get me to that 700 word mark.

Also, I managed to find this in the bottom level of diving stadium. A lot of people wonder what happens to the Olympic Park after the games end. This looks to be a model of what the Rio Olympic park here will look like after the Paralympic Games leave in a few more weeks. At least from what I saw with the model, it should be a pretty nice area.

Tuesday’s a pretty chill day. I actually just finished up the semifinal round of the diving (that’ll be in tomorrow’s blog) and just have website work until 9 p.m.

Miles walked today: 6.39

Total miles walked: 109.07

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