Six weeks ago, Brandon Loschiavo considered himself a retired diver. At the time, the U.S. had only qualified one spot in the Olympics for the men’s 10m platform diving competition, and the 27-year-old came in second in the event at the Olympics Trials.
It was reported Loschiavo threw out all of his suits and shammy towels, and didn’t train or dive for more than a month.
Then, one day before the Opening Ceremonies of the Paris Games, it was announced the U.S. was awarded an additional quota spot in the platform when another foreign athlete dropped out of the competition. The spot went to Loschiavo, who was forced to scramble in the best way. Thankfully, his event didn’t begin until Friday, 14 days after the start of the Games, giving him plenty of time to do some important shopping and find a plane ticket.
Loschiavo told reporters in Paris he felt incredible gratitude about his second chance, but also a lot of fear about needing to get back into world-class shape in such a short amount of time. He added that in his training in Paris he had never smacked on the water so much in his life.
If he wasn’t in shape, it didn’t show on Friday in the preliminary round of the platform event. His first dive scored 72 points, and he was smooth the rest of the day. The Californian was 17th going into his final dive. His sixth time off the board, he performed a front 4 ½ for 85 points, moving up four places and finishing 13th to advance to the semifinals.
The top 18 divers on Friday moved on to the second round. Fellow American Carson Tyler finished 19th, 2.3 points away from advancing.
Tyler finished fourth in the men’s 3m springboard competition on Thursday, and became the first American since 2000 to compete in both individual diving events at the Olympics.
It wasn’t a good start to the day for the 20-year-old from Indiana. His first dive scored just 48.60 points after he over-rotated and didn’t go into the water clean. He bounced back with two dives that both scored better than 70, but his fourth time off the board was another struggle. On a reverse 3 ½ he kicked just a hair too soon and was short of vertical going into the water. He scored just 34 points and dropped out of contention.
Tyler was sitting in 22nd place after five rounds. His final dive, a backward dive with twists, was by far his best of the day, scoring 79.20, but it wasn’t enough. He was eliminated by the final diver of the preliminary round.
China’s Cao Yuan leads the field after the first round. A four-time Olympian, Cao is the defending gold medalist in the platform event, and has three gold medals to his name. Five of his six dives on Friday scored at least 80 points, and he finished the day in first with a total score of 500.15.
Cao’s Chinese teammate Yang Hao had a terrible start to the day, scoring just 28 points on his second dive. But the 2024 world champion in the event bounced back with the two highest scoring dives of the day, a 97.20 in Round 4 and a 99.9 in Round 6. He finished in fourth with a score of 479.80.
Japan’s Tamai Rikuto (497.15) and Canada’s Rylan Wiens (485.25) finished second and third, and Ukraine’s Oleksii Sereda (479.45) finished fifth.
The men’s platform semifinals will be held at 4 a.m. ET on Saturday, followed by the finals at 9 a.m. ET. All scores go back to zero for the next round.