Dhabitah breaches 300-point mark at Diving GP

PETALING JAYA: She may have missed the final again, but teenage diver Nur Dhabitah Sabri has certainly showcased her potential with the best performance to date at the fifth leg of FINA Diving Grand Prix in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Dhabitah, who will turn 15 in July, breached the 300-point mark in the 10m platform individual event for the first time on Friday when she chalked up 302.70 points to settle for fourth place in the semi-finals.

Topping the field were Chinese pair Qian Ren (370.40) and Ji Si Yu (340.55) while American Jessica Parratto (323.00) came in third.

Only the top three divers from each semi-final qualify for the final.

The Kuala Lumpur-born teenager was once again denied from progressing further by just a spot, much like at the German GP in Rostock in February.

But, this time, Dhabitah was still smiling.

“It’s the first time I managed to score over 300 points for five dives, so I couldn’t be more delighted despite not making it to the final,” said Dhabitah from Guanajuato.

“If I had executed my second and fifth attempts better, the accumulated score would have been higher. But overall, I’m really satisfied,”

The Mexican GP is Dhabitah’s second competitive meet of the year.

At the German GP, she could only finish fifth in her semi-final grouping with 269.20 points.

Dhabitah’s team-mate Loh Zhiayi also failed to progress after finishing sixth in the other semi-final with a poor 208.20 score.

In the men’s 3m springboard, Malaysia’s Chew Yi Wei was out of sorts in the preliminaries as his last two disastrous executions left him floundering in 17th place.

He was only saved from a last place finish because New Zealand’s Li Fengyang retired midway through the event.

Yi Wei posted a low 282.70 total, with his fifth and sixth dives only bringing in very low scores of 24.50 and 13.30 respectively.

“It was all fine until the last two dives, I got only ‘1s’ and ‘2s’ for those two attempts,” said Yi Wei.

“It’s very disappointing. I’m still struggling with the two high DD (degree of difficulty) dives. I need to work on that.”