KUALA LUMPUR — Diver Nur Dhabitah Sabri kept her podium bid alive at the Paris Olympics by advancing to the women’s 3m springboard individual final at Paris Aquatics Centre today.
The 25-year-old wild card entry chalked up 286.95 points over five dives to make the top-12 cut in eighth spot.
Dhabitah got off to an encouraging start, scoring 67.50 and 55.50 points for her first two dives. However, she lost momentum with a poor third attempt, yielding only 46.50 points and dropping six rungs to 12th place.
To her credit, Dhabitah managed to stop the slide. She first produced a modest effort of 57.00 points to climb to 10th before executing a fine ‘Forward 3 1/2 Somersault’ with a 3.1 degree of difficulty, earning 60.45 points and propelling her to eighth place.
The women’s 3m springboard final will take place on Friday. Dhabitah aims to improve upon her career-best fourth-place finish in Tokyo three years ago. She will need to up her game to contend for a top-three finish.
Although Dhabitah finished the semi-finals in a better position than her 12th place in Wednesday’s preliminary round, it’s worth noting that she improved her total points by only three points. In the preliminary, Dhabitah amassed 283.65 points.
