KUALA LUMPUR: The uncertainty, the waiting, and the short notice. It all added up to the stress for diver Nur Dhabitah Sabri.
Malaysia Aquatics diving technical director Bryan Nickson Lomas felt that World Aquatics (WA) should announce Olympic wild cards for athletes earlier by two months instead of one month. Wild cards are Olympic berths given to countries whose athletes have not qualified on merit.
Dhabitah, 25, only knew that she would get to compete in Paris at the end of June - that was when WA announced its wild cards - and this left her with only three weeks to prepare. In February, she failed to qualify for the Paris Olympics from the World Championships in Doha.
Bryan said it would be ideal for WA to announce its wildcards two months before the Olympics, but even that is no guarantee that athletes have time for preparation.
On Friday, Dhabitah finished 12th and last in the final of the Olympic women's 3-metre springboard. She did well to get through the preliminaries. In the semi-finals, she finished eighth out of 12 divers and qualified for the final.
"Like what Dhabitah said, her performance was affected by knowing about her qualification late and not having enough time to prepare," said Bryan.
"This (reaching the final) is a positive result from Dhabitah after Doha (world championships) and her injury troubles this year. It's not the result we wanted, but this is still good.
"We expected her to push a little more in the final and finish in the top eight, especially after setting her season's best score of 286.95 in the semi-finals. Unfortunately she made two mistakes on the third and fourth attempts."