Southend Diving star Todd wins another medal at European Championship
Following on from winning a silver medal in the 3m Synchronised diving with teammate Connor Lano, 18-year-old Todd competed in the individual 3m springboard event in Athens.
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The preliminary rounds to qualify for the 12-diver finals got underway on Friday afternoon with 30 divers from 19 countries performing five optional and five voluntary dives.
The incredibly strong field of 18-year-olds/under included all the top European juniors including Germany, AIN (Russia - neutral individual divers), Ukraine, and Italy.
Todd performed with confidence and assuredness throughout to ensure he made the final fairly comfortably in fourth place, but a few more points adrift of the top three than he liked.
In the final, the divers only compete their hardest five optional dives, with Todd having one of the highest tariff/degree of difficulty list of dives in the event.
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Todd stepped up a gear with some great board work and height on his dives and excellent clean finishes.
After round three of five, he was in first place with Italy, Ukraine, and two German divers snapping at his heels and fighting to stay with him.
Many other divers in the final also had high tariff dives but faltered on one or two of them, gradually leaving Todd and Valerio Mosca of Italy fighting for the gold.
On his fourth dive, a reverse 2/ ½ somersaults piked, Todd slightly crimped his knees and lost a few points from the judges for that, allowing the Italian Valerio Mosca to ease ahead of him by 10.65 points.
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Everything rested on the final dive of both boys to decide gold and silver.
Todd performed a high-difficulty forward 2½ somersaults piked, with two twists that he absolutely nailed but Valerio also executed his last dive extremely well to retain first place and finally take the gold from Todd by just 3.85 points in an incredibly exciting final.
Coach Shan Veasey was ecstatic with Todd's performance, saying, 'Todd demonstrated great coolness and determined consistency throughout the final.
'His concentration was excellent, as were his dives apart from a minor flaw here and there.
'I couldn't have been prouder of him.
'His super score against such high-level opposition is the culmination of some very good performances in the last year, coupled with all the hard work done in training to develop new dives and to consolidate them in time for this prestigious European Junior Championships.'
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