Laugher and Goodfellow get off to the perfect start

Jack Laugher and Dan Goodfellow got their synchro diving partnership off to the perfect start as they struck gold on the opening day of the British National Diving Cup.

The City of Leeds duo triumphed in the Men’s 3m Synchro competition after scoring 387.99 to comfortably beat brothers Jack and Ross Haslam (364.44) into second placed.

And they insisted there was more to come from them despite their perfect start at the Plymouth Life Centre.

Olympic, World and Commonwealth champion Laugher said: “Individually we did some cracking dives but unfortunately I don’t think it was a true reflection of how we’ve been doing in the synchronised element of the event.

“We scored some amazing eights and eight and a halves, but we just need to bring that together and I’m hoping it’ll come together really well for the World Series.”

Goodfellow added: “I just need to get more experience in the springboard and I’m competing in the individual.

We didn’t have any performance related goals, we just wanted to go out there and get some experience, learn about each other and see what we need to work on for future events such as that London World Series.”

The silver for the Haslam brothers proved to be Ross’s second medal of the day as he won individual gold in the Men’s 1m Springboard.

He took top spot on the podium by only 1.25 points from Edinburgh’s James Heatly

The City of Sheffield diver said: “It was definitely a busy day, starting off with the 1m and I was really happy to come away with gold in that one, as I’ve actually been putting more focus on my 3m.

“In the synchro, we’ve increased the difficulty in our list so we’ve just got to fine tune that now and hopefully we’ll progress through the year.”

Torrance takes the first gold

City of Leeds’ Kat Torrance won the first gold medal of the competition as she scored 258.40 in the Women’s 1m Springboard to finish ahead of Dive London’s Grace Reid (245.85) and City of Sheffield’s Yasmin Harper (239.55).

Torrance said: “Sometimes people thing that 1m is the easy board with the easier dives, but sometimes it’s those easier ones that are harder to get right.

“It gives me great confidence for the rest of the weekend, but there are different people in both the 3m and 3m Synchro, so I just have to take each event as it comes.

“Me and Grace are such good friends, even outside of the synchro, and there’s always an ‘if it wasn’t me winning I wish it was you’ type attitude.

“It’s good to have Grace there as if we’re competing against each other we’re pushing each other and the more we push individually the better we are together.”

European champions Eden Cheng and Lois Toulson led from the start as they won gold in the Women’s 10m Synchro.

Their score of 282.54 points put them only 0.78 clear of second-placed duo Emily Martin and Phoebe Banks (281.76).

Robyn Birch and Gemma McArthur were the bronze medallists.

Toulson said: “Overall we’re happy but there are definitely things we could have improved on and this competition was all about blowing the cobwebs off. I feel like we’ve done that, so we’re happy.”

Cheng added: “We did feel a bit of pressure to keep our status as the women’s team, because of what we achieved last year, but I think we did a good job.”

There will be live coverage of all the action from day two of the British National Diving Cup on British Swimming’s Deep End Live show.

Image credit: British Swimming Twitter