KIMIKO
HIRAI SOLDATI
OFFICIAL SITE
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OFFICIAL SITE |
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olympics diving Soldati gives it her all The American diver, fighting through pain from her aching shoulder, decides to put fear aside and finish with honor in 3-meter springboard
Athens - There was no need to scan the poolside scores Wednesday to gauge Kimiko Soldati's desperate situation. No need to measure the splash of her dives or read the pain in her face. Soldati's teary-eyed moment was neatly captured in the text pages she and her husband, Adam, exchanged from her second disastrous dive to her fifth during a preliminary round collapse that bounced her from the Olympics. The messages, typed onto rented Greek cellphones and transmitted between Soldati beneath the diving board and Adam in the poolside seats, spoke of courage and support, of inner will and patriotism. The former Longmont resident and Colorado State student was considered an American medal hopeful on the 3-meter springboard. But a nagging shoulder injury prevented her from washing her hair, tying a ponytail or practicing on the days leading up to her preliminary dives. Her timing was rusty and her shoulder still ached when she plunged into her first of five dives, a 2 1/2 somersault pike. She didn't nail it. She didn't stick it. She might as well have done a cannonball tuck. The resulting splash caused some observers to gasp and the judges to award Soldati with a string of 4.5 scores - the equivalent of an F- on a school exam. She opened the day ranked 32nd out of 33 divers. The top 18 would move to the semifinals. From that point on, though, Soldati said she never looked at the scores or her ranking again. "I was hoping I was going to be able to get through as best as I can on guts," she said. "And that's really what I did." She needed near perfection in her second dive, an inward 2 1/2 somersault pike. She got barely mediocre, scoring 5.0s and climbing only slightly higher to 29th. Now she wasn't just worried about her own unsteady performance; she began to fret about what her fans and family sitting poolside were saying, she said. She felt something divers try everything to avoid: fear. "After the second dive I felt like I had a choice - it's over, I'm out of it, forget it, give up, give in to the fear, put into the doubt," she said. "But that's where I put my foot down and said no." She also decided not to wince or show any hint of the throbbing shoulder while she stood on the board or emerged from the pool, she said, because she wanted to represent the United States with calm honor. That's when she needed to check in with her husband. She sent him a text page trying out her fresh bravado: "I'm a survivor. I'm a fighter. I'm not giving up." Adam, a former diver himself, messaged back: "Amen, baby. Believe." After her third attempt - another somersault pike that scored a healthy rows of 7.0s - Adam warned her not to get too excited: "One dive at a time." She was now in 27th place. Dive No. 4 was her highlight reel. Soldati scored an 8.0 and a pair of 7.5s with still another somersault. "Take that!" she typed after toweling off. "Awesome," Adam responded. Soldati's final dive felt high and smooth, she said, but the judges awarded lukewarm 6.0s and 5.5s, cementing her in 21st place, just out of the qualifiers. "I left my heart out there, I didn't leave anything behind, and I never gave up throughout each dive. I never gave up. And I'm proud of that," Soldati said, breaking into tears several times. "It's tough, though, when you work so hard and you train ..." She could not finish the sentence. Now 30, Soldati said an assessment on her next move - retirement or another Olympics - is on hold. "I'm not going to make a decision right now, because I'm an emotional mess," she said. She plans next to have a baby, she said. And a fifth shoulder surgery may be coming soon. "Diving is what I do and not who I am, and that's one reason why I'm able to not self-destruct right now," she said. "I'm not defined by the results of this meet." Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com |
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