England’s Jack Laugher produced three nerveless and near-faultless final dives to clinch 1m springboard gold for a third successive Commonwealth Games. His late surge to the top of the leaderboard saw teammate Jordan Houlden knocked off top spot and forced to settle for bronze, as Australia’s Shixin Li took silver. Scotland’s James Heatly, whose grandfather won this event at the Vancouver 1954 Commonwealth Games, finished fourth.
In the absence of Tom Daley, who is taking a break from the sport to spend time with his family, the English spotlight has been shining brightly on Laugher this week. The 27-year-old carries a sparkling Commonwealths record with five golds and a silver, and came in as the double 1m springboard champion having won gold at Glasgow 2014 and Gold Coast 2018. He qualified for the final earlier on Thursday in a surprisingly edgy fourth place, a result he put down to nerves in front of a passionate home crowd which divers don’t experience too often on the regular circuit. “I just need to let go and enjoy myself,” he said ahead of the final, and he certainly did that.
Bronze was also quite the achievement by Houlden, a Sheffield lad who was once scared of water. Houlden began life as a gymnast and it was his acrobatics which first caught the eye of Sheffield Diving; he earnt a three-day trial despite the fact he couldn’t yet swim, and had to pluck up the courage to dive into the deep water. In the build-up to the Games, Houlden had described a medal as “unlikely”, and yet after three of six rounds he was leading the final – so clean were his opening two high-difficulty dives that he got away with a more ragged third.
But Laugher reserved his more technical dives until the latter rounds and took the lead from Houlden in round four with a crisp inwards 2 ½ somersaults, scoring 79.90 (Houlden had scored 81.60 with the same dive in the opening round). Meanwhile the Australian Li, who had finished top of the preliminaries, faltered and fell behind the English duo, scoring only 61.5 from his back 2½ somersaults, before producing his best dive of 81.60 in round five to climb back into contention for gold.
It left Laugher 10 points ahead of Li going into the last round, with Houlden a further four points back in third place. Silence descended on the arena as Laugher paused for breath at the back of the board, but he had been here before and there were no signs of nerves as he delivered a beautifully poised forward 3½ somersaults. The crowd immediately sensed it would be enough for gold and a score of 80.85 confirmed as much, even with Houlden and Li still to go. A few moments later Li earned exactly the same score from exactly the same dive to secure silver.
“Jordan’s first two dives were absolutely unbelievable,” Laugher admitted as he stepped out of the pool. “What a way to celebrate with my teammate on the podium. What an achievement to win three Commonwealth Games in a row.”
Laugher has struggled with his mental health since the previous Games, experiencing what he described as “the worst two years of his life” in which he considered quitting diving altogether. “Everybody has struggles and hardships and I think it’s really important that we all try and help each other,” he said. “My advice is to talk to friends and family about how you feel.”
Houlden was delighted to pick up bronze. “[I’m] speechless really because I wasn’t expecting to get the bronze medal,” he said. “I came out here, it’s a really nice facility and I dove really well. It was definitely a bit overwhelming in the prelims but I was able to work on that and grasp how it was going to be this afternoon and did really well.”
