Hains Fifth at Junior World Champs

17 year-old platform diver Nikita Hains has taken a set of fifth place finishes at the Junior World Championships in Ukraine.

In her second appearance for her country at Junior World Championship level, the Dianella resident mixed it with the best in the world to finish just outside the podium in the A Girls 10m platform final after she had partnered Annarose Keating in achieving the same position in the Girls Synchronised Platform final.

In the individual competition, Hains performed with confidence and precision to take the fourth highest aggregate score through preliminaries into the 12-member final.

At Junior World Championship level, divers are required to perform four compulsory dives and four optional dives through the preliminary round. Only the four compulsory scores are factored for finals calculations, with finalists then required to repeat their optional dives, with those scores added to create a total combined score.

Hains’ four compulsory dives in the preliminaries were easily enough to move through to the final from a field of 28 divers.

She carried through 159.80 points into the final, adding a further 238.60 points with her optional dives, for a total score of 398.40 points and fifth place.

The title was won by China’s Rui Zhang, ahead of her compatriot Shan Lin with Russia’s Iana Satina third.

In the 10m synchro final, Hains and Keating split the nine member field, finishing in fifth place with a total score of 250.92. The title was won by Chinese divers Shiyun Lai and Jialing Liu.