When Jack Laugher topped the podium in the men’s 3m synchro event in Rio eight years ago, he and partner Tom Mears were taking British diving into waters new, delivering the country’s first ever Olympic gold medal in the sport.
Alongside Games debutant Anthony Harding, there was not quite a repeat here in Paris, but a bronze medal still wrote fresh history for a group of athletes that, in the space of one generation, has gone from being a contingent on the fringes of Team GB success to a key cog in the medal factory’s whirr.
For the first time in Olympic history, Britain’s divers have won four medals at a single Games, a remarkable haul in itself made more so by the fact that, so far, there have been only four events.
That perfect podium record will do well to survive the individual finals to come, not least because China - who, despite being run unexpectedly close by Mexico, made it four golds from four - will likely have two contenders in each. But there are solo British hopes, too, that on this level of collective form must be taken extremely seriously, indeed.
Laugher and Harding were out of the pool almost as quickly as they were into it after nailing their sixth and final dive, embracing in celebration of the medal secured with a total score of 438.15.
The key moment though, had come in the previous round, when the pair stood at the edge of the board and sprung into the most difficult dive on their card. Typically, they had saved it until last, but after a butchered effort cost them a medal at the World Championships, a pre-Paris shakeup was forced.
"For me, ordinarily, it’s a good dive but over the last year or so Anthony’s had a struggle with it,” Laugher, now a four-time Olympic medalist explained. “It felt like it was just too much pressure and we wanted to make that list order better.”
The routine -a forward two-and-a-half somersaults with three twists - has a 3.9 difficulty, higher even than anything the Chinese attempted here.
“It’s the hardest dive we do,” Harding said. “In training, to get the adrenaline to do it is so difficult.
“It’s Jack’s strongest dive so it’s a no-brainer that it has to be there. For me, I’m just so happy to get it in when it actually mattered.”
In Doha, at the Worlds, it had scored them only 63 points,. Here it was worth 85. According to Laugher’s expert eye, 24-year-old Harding’s effort on the dive in question was even better than his.
Their last dive was even better, just shy of 95 points and enough even to prompt hope of silver, with the Mexicans still to dive. The pair of Juan Celaya and Osmar Olvera delivered, though, as they had all morning, deservedly taking silver having made a contest out of what most arriving at the Aquatics Centre assumed would be a procession for the Chinese.
Heading into round five, Daoyi Long and Zongyuan Wang were in the unfamiliar position of leading the chasing pack after a strangely wobbly run. They delivered when it mattered most, but were not sure of victory until the very last dive of the day, as Mexico came up just two points short of the score needed to snatch gold.
Harding, still breathless speaking in the mixed zone the best part of an hour later, talked mainly of relief at the culmination of a journey that began with in tears at his first ever session in Oldham, begging not to be sent off the end of the board.
For different reasons, Laugher felt the same, the 29-year-old under particular pressure to make the podium having watched partner Lois Toulson win bronze in the women’s 10m synchro two days before.
“Tell me about it!” he laughed. “I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t get one and she did.”
Bragging rights shared in that partnership then, thanks to the success of this.
“We’ve had a rough year this year,” Laugher said of a pairing with Harding born after the Tokyo Games. “We started off the World Championships on a bit of a dodgy note, finishing fifth. That gave us a bit of a reality check in terms of changing something around, maybe even changing the way we trained.
“We worked really hard and we’ve got here but my word, there was pressure on us today. What we’ve done is wonderful and we’ll remember this forever.”
