Anna Lindberg clinched Sweden’s first quota place for the 2012 Olympics and boosted her own prospects of qualifying for a fifth consecutive games with victory in the 3m springboard event at the European Diving championships in Turin.
The 1m springboard bronze-medallist, who missed the event when it was last staged in Turin as she was pregnant, posted a score of 347.1 points, soundly beating the defending champion Nadezda Bazhina and Italy’s Tania Cagnotto to take gold.
“My bronze medal in the 1m springboard event was just a warm-up for the much more important 3m springboard competition today,” said Lindberg, daughter of the 1972 Olympic 10m platform champion Ulrika Knape-Lindberg. “I’m happy I have achieved my aim: the quota place for Sweden.”
Both Bazhina and Cagnotto conceded that their performances in the final were sub-par. “I had a few problems settling into the competition today,” said the Russian, while Cagnotto admitted: “I failed to do better due to my head rather than my body."
Italy’s Maria Marconi finished finished fourth in the 1m springboard event, with Britain's Hannah Starling finishing eighth.
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The German duo Sascha Klein and Patrick Hausding claimed their fourth consecutive European title with another dominant display in the men’s 10m synchro platform final, with Ukraine's Oleksandr Gorshkovozov and Oleksandr Bondar getting the better of last year’s silver-medallists Victor Minibaev and Ilya Zakharov of Russia, who took bronze.
“This was a very positive competition for us. We performed excellently and have never been better together”, said Bondar, who finished third in the event at the Piscina Stadio Monumentale two years ago.
Klein and Hausding returned on Sunday to claim gold and silver respectively in the individual 10m platform final, with Bondar taking home the bronze. In the final event of the competition, Cagnotto and Francesca Dallapè gave the local fans something to shout about with victory in the women's 3m synchro springboard final.