March 21, 2007

Wilkinson sails through to finals at World Championships

MELBOURNE, Australia – Laura Wilkinson is in the finals.

Easily.

Wilkinson (Spring, Texas) finished fifth with 348.80 points in the women’s 10-meter semifinals Wednesday morning at the World Championships to advance to Wednesday night’s finals. The top 12 divers advance.

It was a complete turnaround for the defending champion, who almost missed moving on to the semis after a rough outing in the Tuesday prelims, when she was in 22 nd place with one dive to go but finished 16 th.

The dive that started her struggles in prelims – her inward 3 ½ in the second round – was solid in the semifinals. She scored 76.80 points on the dive on Wednesday, receiving an 8.5 and four 8.0s after scoring just 16 points on the dive a day before.

She improved her total score by more than 60 points after finishing with just 288.00 points in the prelims.

China’s Chen Roulin, who also won the Tuesday prelims, finished first with 417.05 and her teammate Wang Xin was second at 402.10 in semis.

The finals are set for 8:30 p.m. Melbourne time (5:30 a.m. Eastern time).

By guaranteeing a finish in the top 12, Wilkinson has secured one spot for the United States on women’s platform for the 2008 Olympic Games. The top 12 finishers on each individual Olympic event earn spots for their countries.

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