Canada’s most prolific male diving talent of all time had his last Olympic dive today as Alexandre Despatie finished 11th in the 3m Springboard dive.
After a few solid dives in the final round, Despatie just didn’t have enough in the tank to get up high and complete his most complex dive which drastically lowered his finishing place. After a training period building up to the Olympics punctuated by a concussion and an exceedingly deep field, the odds were stacked against Despatie to leave with a medal.
Despatie, the only Canadian male to medal at an Olympic games, competed in four Olympic games over the course of his career, making his Olympics debut at the age of 15 years old at Sydney 2000. His two medals, both silvers, came in the 3m springboard in 2004 (Athens) and 2008 (Beijing).
It’s hard to understate how prolific Despatie has been in the international diving scene. With three gold medals at the World Championships, nine gold medals at the Commonwealth Games and four gold medals at the Pan-Am Games — not to mention a few bucketloads of silvers and bronzes from those competitions — he has been absolutely immense for Canada’s diving program which we are now seeing reap medals consistently. All of this without touching on his long list of accomplishments on the junior diving circuit.
Despatie has had a storied career, and will be missed by Canada on the international scene. Some will argue that he has gone out with a whimper in his final games, but his legacy extends much farther than that and will persist until someone officially unseats him as the greatest Canadian male diver of all time.
