ne is the defending gold medalist. The other is the late-blooming medal hopeful. Together, they form one of the world’s best women’s synchronized diving teams and serve as the nucleus of the U.S. national diving team.
Laura Wilkinson, 25, won the 10-meter platform in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Kimiko Hirai Soldati (shown), the self-described “grandma” of the group at 29, didn’t start diving until late in high school — much later than most divers — but her learning curve has been tremendous on a national team with an average age in the early 20s.
After missing the 2000 Olympic trials because she hadn’t fully healed from two major shoulder surgeries, Hirai Soldati has roared back with four national first-place showings in the past two years — winning all three diving events — and a silver medal in platform diving at the 2002 World Cup (the 2004 trials will be in St. Louis next June).
Although she might have burst onto the international scene relatively late in life, Hirai Soldati has proven to be a legitimate threat to win a medal at the 2004 Athens Games, according to Ron O’Brien, U.S. Diving’s national technical director.
“She is an extremely determined young lady and a very hard worker,” says O’Brien, who managed or coached in the Olympics from 1972 to ’96, including working with the legendary Greg Louganis. “Once you get that medal at the international level, you’ve pretty much proven yourself to the judges.
“In some ways, your reputation precedes.”
If that’s the case, there’s a lot of respect for Wilkinson, who won the platform event in 2000, becoming the first U.S. woman to do so since 1964.
After taking 1-1/2 years off and mending a foot injury, Wilkinson told Aquatics International she is “probably in the best shape ever,” and is sporting a new lineup of difficult dives that now puts her on par with the world’s best.
“I’m getting a lot more comfortable learning these new dives,” says Wilkinson, who is training full-time with Hirai Soldati and other national team members at U.S. Diving’s new Centralized Training Center at The Woodlands Athletic Center in Houston. “I’m not scared anymore because I’ve done all of them at some point. “I just need to be more consistent.
O’Brien said a new bonus points system has motivated U.S. divers to take on more difficult routines and it’s paying off, especially with the women’s team.
“We were lagging behind in the past on the women’s side,” he says. “Now we’ve caught up. Our men were always very competitive.
“Now it’s just a matter of performance standards with those dives.”
O’Brien says Wilkinson’s newfound repertoire of dives should make her the favorite once again in Athens.
“To be honest, at the last Olympics she was not in the same ballpark with the top Chinese divers, in degree of difficulty,” O’Brien points out. “What she was better in was quality of dives.
“This time, if she can perform her same quality of dives with the new degree of difficulty, she’s going to be hard to beat. The defending champion in diving is like a heavyweight boxing champion: You’re not going to get a decision against them; you have to beat her.”
