Together with Ternovoy: Nikita Shleikher becomes vice world champion
Report from the bronze dives of the Russians at the World Aquatics Championships
Tatarstan diver Nikita Shleikher, together with his partner on the Russian national team Ruslan Ternovoy, won silver medals at the world championship. The competition in synchronized diving from the platform in Singapore is coming to an end, and Shleikher will have to compete individually. Read more about it in the report of Realnoe Vremya.
The gap from gold was less than a point
Watching the live broadcast and realizing that the duet of Nikita Shleikher and Ruslan Ternovoy was one step away from gold, one could imagine what was going on in the souls of the guys who were waiting for the score of the Chinese duet, who dived last. But then the scores appeared on the board, where opposite the athletes from the PRC there was the number one, indicating the final place, and next to it the final scores: 429.63 for the Chinese and 428.7 for the Russians. The gap was less than a point — 0.93.
This is like the 0.01 second gap between the Finn Juha Mieto and the Swede Thomas Wassberg in the 15-kilometre classic distance at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. In the end, Wassberg won gold and Mieto won silver, after which the International Skiing Federation removed thousandths of a second from the protocols and at the next World Championships in 1982 generously handed out gold to the skiers of the USSR and Norway, and bronze to the Finns and athletes from the GDR.
However, we have our own examples when the numbers of a microscopic gap on the scoreboard separated the Russian pair, Yevgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, from the gold medals that the Chinese Sui Wenjing and Han Cong received. Four years ago in Beijing, they were separated by 0.63, which is akin to the weight of a butterfly on a 100-kilogramme barbell.
Irek Zinnurov: “Bonuses await Shleikher, and we expect that this medal will not be his last”
“Finally, I am happy for Nikita,” Marat Bariyev, president of the “related” Tatarstan Artistic Gymnastics Federation, emotionally reacted to winning the medal. “Shleikher achieved great success in these conditions. Another honoured master of sports in our republic!”
The emotions of Irek Zinnurov, president of the Sintez water sports club, could not be accurately described, since the joy of winning the silver medal contrasted with the sadness of losing the gold. It's like holding in your hands a hard-to-catch, quite well-fed tit and part of the plumage of a crane, which a second ago was already yours.
“It's a pity that it's not gold, it's a shame. At the same time, the guys achieved a very good result. I wouldn't say that the Chinese were dragged to the gold medal, but it is obvious that they were assessed a little more leniently than ours. In any case, this is a huge success for Roman Ternovoy and Nikita Shleikher from Tatarstan, a member of our water sports club Sintez. Nikita will receive bonuses stipulated in the contract for successful performances, and we, in turn, expect that this medal will not be the last, since he still has to compete, including in the individual programme.”
Finally, the third in line of the interlocutor — Yefim Klimov, president of the Diving Federation of Tatarstan, did not hold back his emotions at all: “We were judged! Not only I think so, but also many representatives of our diving community.”
Yefim Klimov: “I understand in my heart that silver is very good”
“Then it is not clear, Mr Klimov, whether to congratulate you on silver or sympathize?”
“It is curious that I myself was in the same mixed feelings when I wrote the text message to the guys. In my heart I understand that silver is very good. But how close the gold was and how offensively it slipped away when it was gradually taken away from us by the judges' scores, starting with the fifth dive. They did not add points to the Chinese — no, they took points away from us, giving some terrible scores of five points, ugh. If these competitions were held not in Singapore, but here, as was originally planned, I think that the representatives of the judging corps would not have the heart to lower our scores.
It's okay, they will be angrier, I am sure of it. A normal competition — with silver, because this will lead our guys to new achievements. I know very well how hard the guys worked here to return with dignity. How they worked there, being as focused as possible before the dives, I saw and felt it through the screen. They were already going to Singapore not just for medals, bronze, for example, no — for gold! Declaring their leadership ambitions at the beginning of the Olympic cycle,” summed up Klimov, whom I would still like to congratulate.
As well as the duo's coaches Dmitry Shlykov and Raisa Galperina, the mentor and mother of the famous former diver Gleb Galperin, who was reporting live from Singapore. If we are talking about congratulations from coaches and relatives, then Pavel Muyakin, Shleikher's mentor and godfather, practically second father, fully deserves them. Former president of the republic's diving federation Damir Fattakhov is practically for Tatarstan divers. Former director of the Palace of Water Sports Albert Bagautdinov is almost a father figure. The “grandfather” of all waterfowl and divers of this palace is its current director Mikhail Smolkin.
The Russians got to the final from second place after the Chinese, which, however, did not give any advantage. Except that our athletes dived each series penultimate, before the Chinese. After the first series of dives, they and the Chinese were in the same first and second places. After the second series, the Japanese joined them — that's when there was real synchronicity, since our guys and the Japanese had the same scores down to the thousandth. In the third series, the Russians broke away from the Japanese by seven points, and did the fourth dive so well that they were already ahead of the Japanese by 17 points, and the Chinese, who failed this dive, by 21. After the fifth series, the Japanese retreated, although the Chinese made up for the seven points they were behind us.
By the way, the Malaysians were also quite competitive. When they had all dived, it became clear that the Russians had silver in their pocket, but with our final dive we could fish gold out of the bottom of the Singapore pool, having an advantage of almost 14 points. The final dive of the Russian duet, frankly speaking, did not go well, but the Chinese did not turn out a masterpiece either. Nevertheless, the judges gave them 15 points more than Ternovoy and Shleikher.
If this World Championship had been held in Kazan, as it should have been originally, the gold of the divers, as well as the gold of the figure skaters four years ago, would have been ours. In this case, the notorious home advantage worked, since Singapore is for China, as Belarus is for Russia. At the same time, diving is a sport in which, in order to take gold away from the Chinese, you have to do something incredible. Over the past 10 years, starting with the Kazan World FINA Championships, representatives of the rest of the world have managed to do the incredible 16 times. This is the total number of gold medals from the Olympics and World Championships. For comparison: China already had 86 victories, plus seven more were added in Singapore.