Krysta Palmer competes in women's diving 3m springboard preliminary at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre on Friday in Tokyo.
Thursday night, Krysta Palmer, the 29-year-old Olympian, stepped back on the springboard as an individual in the preliminary qualification round of the 3-meter dive competition.
Out of 27 divers that made it to Thursday night’s preliminary round, 18 qualified for Friday night’s semifinal, which was held after the Appeal went to press.
Palmer qualified in 15th with a total score of 279.10.
Her teammate, Hailey Hernandez, ended the first round of competition in sixth place with a score of 309.55.
Palmer’s opening dive scored 66 points, but she managed scores of just 48 and 40.50 points on her second and third dives.
The first-time Olympian sat in 19th place after her third dive, but posted a 65.10 in her fourth dive to jump back into qualifying position.
“I knew I just needed to fight until the end, I think that’s just our sport,” Palmer told TeamUSA.com. “You can come back with better dives and really the biggest thing is just to fight until the very end because anything can happen.
“Just like today, it wasn’t really the list I was hoping to come out with but I knew that prelims is always going to be a little shaky but I am just really grateful to have made it through to semifinals to be able to give it a better go.”
A 59.5 on her fifth and final dive was enough to make it to Friday.
Palmer’s last dive was her toughest of the prelims, attempting a double-out with a difficulty rating of 3.4.
The Northern Nevada native was back in action Friday night, when the top 12 divers advanced to tonight’s final.
The finals begin at 11 p.m. and can be streamed on NBCOlympics.com and can be watched on USA Network.
