Julia Vincent in medal fight before ending her diving career in Paris

Two poor finishing dives sank Julia Vincent’s medal chances at the Paris Olympics on Friday afternoon as she finished a disappointing 11th in the 3m springboard with a total of 271.25 points.

Before that she had been lying third.

Her first dive had placed her 10th out of the 12-strong field with 54 points, but the next two rocketed her up the rankings, scoring 67.50 and 66.00 to move into the top three with two dives remaining.

But the US-based diver scored her two worst scores of the competition, 38.75 and 45.00, on her next two efforts to finish off the competition — and her career — feeling bittersweet.

“I definitely feel proud,” said Vincent, the first South African diver to make a final.

“I did want it to go better but I feel proud that, you know, I hope that someone, you know, one little girl can feel like, ‘You know what, maybe I can do something like this one day’.

“I wanted it to go better ... it’s just bittersweet ending,” said Vincent, adding she did not know her ranking, having not followed the scoring during the competition.

“I wasn’t watching the results or anything. I just knew I had done two pretty good dives. So I was like, ‘All right’.

“I don’t know what everyone else is doing, but I know that if I’m getting those scores then I’m doing OK.”

But when she went for her penultimate dive in the fourth round she could feel the adrenaline.

“As I went into the fourth round I could feel it, I really could feel it, especially when I left the board I was like, ‘OK, I got this’. And then diving, you can make the smallest mistake and things can go wrong.”

The final fifth dive wasn’t much better.

“I wanted to finish on a good note because that in theory is the last dive of my career but I had a lot of adrenaline. I haven't felt that kind of adrenaline in a long time.

“I didn't feel like super nervous but I felt like there was a lot in me. And I actually thought I had it. I thought I had it till the end. I just came around and made a small error which takes you a little over.

“But I really had it until the last millisecond of the dive.”

Vincent’s diving career took off after she had gone to the US and she didn’t believe South Africa had the facilities to create world-class divers at the moment.

“I really want to say yes,” she replied when asked if South Africa could produce top divers. 

“But as of right now, I don’t think it is. I think that there’s a lot to be done before we can have a home-grown diver, you know, Olympic diver just because we need more facilities, we need more support financially ...

“To become an Olympic finalist I think it would be really hard, especially on the boards that those girls are diving on every day. It’s tough, I mean, it’s really tough.

“Whenever I’ve gone back for nationals I’m like, oh boy, I’m reminded of, you know, where I came from.”

Vincent said she’d like to stay involved in the sport, especially to help divers in South Africa.

“I would love to see how we could structure it differently, just to aid the athlete a little bit more. I think sometimes the athlete goes through a lot and a lot of the times it's things that athletes shouldn't be going through ...

“And it’s nothing towards my federation, I don’t want that to be taken the wrong way, but I think some restructuring and just figuring out how we can put the athlete first and make sure that they are being helped in every way that they can to get to these heights.”