The Seoul Games / Day 2 : The Splashes Tell the Diving Tale : Mitchell Takes Silver, Williams Gets Bronze as Top Performers Flop on Final Dives

SEOUL —  Michele Mitchell was trying not to pay any attention to the scores, but she could hear the splashes. And those splashes told everyone in the Chamshil Indoor Swimming Pool Sunday afternoon that Soviet diver Anjela Stassioulevitch had missed on her final dive, that Soviet diver Elena Miroshina had missed on her dive and that Chinese diver Chen Xiaodan had missed big on her final dive, landing mostly on her back and opening the door for U.S. teammate Wendy Williams to join Mitchell on the awards stand.

Since all of the medals were up for grabs going into the final round of the women’s platform diving competition, those splashes signaled some last-minute changes in the standings.

Xu Yanmei, at 17 one of the oldest of the Chinese divers, scored 8s on her last dive, a back 2 1/2 somersault pike, to hold onto first place and win the gold medal with a final score of 445.20 points. Mitchell, who had taken the silver medal on the platform in the 1984 Games, came away with another silver medal when she scored mostly 7.5s on her forward 3 1/2 somersault in tuck position to finish with 436.95 points. And Williams, after struggling along in last place through the early rounds, scored 8s on her inward 2 1/2 somersault pike for a total of 400.44 points, which was good enough for the bronze after the other contenders took themselves out of it.

Williams, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Miami, was competing in the Olympic Games for the first time. She had said a few days earlier that she just wanted to help get the Games off to a good start for the United States.

Considering the strength of the Chinese divers, the high expectations of the Soviets and the way the U.S. women have been played down, getting the country’s first two medals in women’s platform diving was quite a spectacular start.

Williams said: “My coach (Scott Reich) had told me going into the last dive that if I stayed strong I still had a chance to win a medal. But I had seen the scores the previous round and I thought, ‘Yeah, right.’ But the dive I had coming up was the dive that got me my first 10s, so I stood there on the platform and said to myself, ‘10s, 10s’ before I left the tower.

“I didn’t get 10s, but I was happy with the dive. When I was finished, I was standing on the side of the pool deck, thinking that I was going to be fourth and getting kind of teary. I had been able to keep my spirits up since the early rounds, concentrating on doing my best. But fourth wasn’t quite what I wanted to go home with.

“My tears of disappointment turned to tears of joy within minutes.”

For Mitchell, 26, it was her last Olympic competition. Gold would have made this a grand finale, but she had taken a realistic approach, knowing that she was not the favorite. She had no complaints about her silver medal.

“I stood up there and told myself, ‘Let’s do it the best we possibly can.’ ” And she said it with a smile.

Williams’ coach had told her the day before that she should not be upset about finishing the first day of competition, basically an elimination round, in fourth position. All 12 of the divers who made Sunday’s final started fresh, with no scores carried over from the day before. Reich was telling her that she had to stay steady, that there just might be “a window of opportunity” opening up.

But when her first few dives dropped her all the way to last place, it was hard to believe.

Reich said, “I think maybe Wendy’s age and maturity helped her on a day like this. I wouldn’t say experience, though, because this is her first Olympic Games. She’s been in international competition before, so she’s not an unknown. But diving is very subjective, and sometimes it helps if the judges have seen you more.

“She earned everything she got today.”

Xu, the 1987 World Cup champion, had finished the first day of competition in third place, behind her own teammate, Chen, who was first, and Mitchell, who was second. Reich, for one, was not surprised that Xu came on to win the gold in the finals. That was the way he was calling it.

“It was a long day yesterday,” Reich said. “They had to get started early again this morning. The divers doing a more difficult list had a hard time lasting.”

Xu is not as aggressive as Chen and does not include as much difficulty in her list. Explaining that, Xu said: “I believe that if I do dives with less difficulty, but I do them with greater grace, I can get equally good scores.”

And not push herself over the limit. Of the six divers in contention for the three medals going into the final round, the eventual winners had chosen dives with lesser difficulty. Xu’s dive was a 2.9, Mitchell’s a 2.7 and Williams’ a 2.8.

Miroshina, who was less than a point behind the fifth-place Williams after the seventh dive, missed on a dive with a 3.2 degree of difficulty. Stassioulevitch missed a 2.7, and Chen missed on a 3.3.

There was probably much more that could have been said about the strategies involved, but the crush of media and the time consumed translating questions into Korean, English and French and then translating answers into Korean, English and French, cut the time very short. Besides, Xu had very little to say except that she was homesick. In her golden moment, she told the worldwide press: “I would just like to go home as quickly as possible.”