Anton Down-Jenkins Makes Semi-final of Olympic Diving

Openly gay Kiwi Anton Down-Jenkins has successfully won his way through to the semi-finals of the Men’s 3-metre springboard diving event at the Tokyo Olympics, but only just.

Competing at his first Olympics and the first New Zealand Olympic diver in almost 40 years, Down-Jenkins finished 16th in the preliminary qualification event in Tokyo on Monday, enough to take him through to the semi-final on Tuesday.

One of two openly gay divers at the 2020 Olympics, alongside gold medallist Tom Daley, Down-Jenkins chose a fairly safe program of dives across the six rounds of the preliminaries.

Most of his dives had degrees of difficulty at around the 3.0 or 3.1 levels except for his final dive of 3.4. After his 5th dive, forward 2.5 somersaults and 1 twist resulted in his best score of 72.00 and him placed 15th. He made it within the 18 place cutoff by two spots.

Two Chinese divers Zongyuan Wang and Siyi Xie led the opening rounds with reigning Olympic champion Jack Laugher finishing in 6th place.

Before the Olympics, 21-year-old Down-Jenkins said he was passionate about being a sporting role model for LGBTQ+ people.

“We don’t see too much LGBTQ+ representation in sport, so I want to be part of that representation for my community and in turn, help break down the idea that someone’s sexual orientation or identity is a barrier for success in the sporting realm,” Down-Jenkins explained to Radio NZ.

“I got really lucky because of the LGBQT representation that there has been in diving in terms of [Australian] Matthew Mitcham who won gold in Beijing and [Briton] Tom Daley who is multi Olympic medallist and world champion and having those role models proved to me that regardless of my sexual orientation or sexual identity that I can perform at the highest level of sport.

“I’ve never felt the need to hide who I am or think twice about it but I know that’s not the reality for a lot of people.”

The semi-finals will be held at 10am Tusday morning Tokyo time.

Last Updated on Aug 2, 2021