KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's hopes of sending a male diver to the Tokyo Olympics now hinges on Syafiq Puteh and the decision of Fina, the world governing body for aquatics.
The men's interest at the Diving World Cup in Tokyo ended with the preliminary round of the men's 3m springboard individual today.
The 25-year-old Syafiq did justify his inclusion in the event ahead of the more experienced Ooi Tze Liang as he tallied 367.35 to finish 23rd at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
It was, however, not enough to take him into the top-18 semi-final, where he would have guaranteed a ticket to the Tokyo Games in July.
With a few more quota slots to be filled, Syafiq hopes he would be on Fina's final list of divers for the Olympics.
Fina are expected to come up with the final entries next month.
It was, however, the end of the road for Chew Yiwei as a disastrous outing dashed his hopes of qualifying for the Olympics.
The 2018 Asian Games bronze medallist was 10th after the first dive and followed it up with two poor dives for scores of 25.50 and 36.75.
And that effectively wiped out any chance of a comeback as the Selangor-born eventually finished 43rd out of 54 divers with a score of 315.10 points.
For the record, Malaysia have had male divers in the Olympics since the 2000 Sydney Games.
Daniel Goodfellow of Britain tallied 487.50 points to finish ahead of compatriot James Heatly (478.20), while Germany's Martin Wolfram (446.95) came in third in the springboard prelim.