Grace Reid hopes recovery can help secure Olympics place

Grace Reid managed to overcome a morale-denting dive in Sheffield to eventually claim gold. Pic: Getty

The 20-year-old Edinburgh University student went into the three metre event in Sheffield on Sunday as one of the favourites, but scored just 12 points from her third dive.

That meant the pressure was on, but she recovered with dives of 54 and 63 points respectively to give her a total of 255.45 points from the first phase.

She qualified for the final in fourth place behind rivals Alicia Blagg, Rebecca Gallantree and Clare Cryan and the former George Watson’s College pupil admitted that she had to really pick herself up during the interval.

“In the morning heading into the event I felt really good, but I had an absolute nightmare with one of my dives and I was in a pretty emotional place,” Edinburgh Diving Club’s Reid said.

“I really had to try and regroup and pick myself up for the final and I managed to do that and it showed me that if you can hold it together mentally then it does a lot of the work for you and you can go on and achieve good results.”

In the final she was in inspired form in Yorkshire, scoring a total of 325.45 points to earn a spot on top of the podium.

She scored highest for her front three and a half somersaults piked with 68.20 points which was enough to move her into the lead of the competition.

She remained in the lead and finished with 72 points for her front two and a half somersaults one twist piked to spark celebrations between her and her coach Jen Leeming

Having been part of the Great Britain team at the Rio test event back in February, Reid is now waiting anxiously to find out if her recent form will be enough to see her heading back to Brazil for the Olympics later this summer. The British diving team is announced on Friday

“It will be a nervous wait over the next few days that is for sure,” the two-time Commonwealth Games athlete who won two medals at the European Championships earlier this year said. “I cannot put into words how much going to an Olympics would mean to me. It is everything I think about and everything I daydream of and it has really been on my mind for the last four years since London.

However, it is not in my hands anymore and I have done all I can do, so we will just have to keep our fingers crossed over the next few days and wait and see.

“The main thing for me over the last few months has been confidence really.

“What I have also tried to do is to treat events the same as training and just focus fully on the dive in hand and not worry about the crowds or the importance of the meet.

That mindset certainly helped me to come away with the result [at the weekend] and I am really pleased with it.

“The experience in Rio earlier in the year at the test event was amazing for me and I think just being around that level of athletes showed me where I needed to be.

“From getting to that event to then the time out there I took something away from each stage of the journey and I feel I have built on things from there.

“For me it has been important to take something from every event I have competed in whether it be a club competition or a world competition as you have to keep learning all of the time.”