The significance of Ng Sui's final dive in the men's platform preliminaries yesterday morning (Hong Kong time) was not his meagre score of 38.25.
Rather, his forward 11/2 somersault with two twists was the last manoeuvre by any Hong Kong Olympian under the British flag.
Maybe it was symbolic that 15-year-old Ng, the second youngest diver in the competition, was in the company of Chinese divers Tian Liang , Xiao Hailiang and women's gold medal winner Fu Mingxia and their coaches in between his six dives.
Hong Kong coach Tang Kei-shan only appeared at the end of the competition, in which Ng finished 33rd out of 37.
Ng totalled 273.30 from six dives, far behind Russian Dmitri Sautin, whose 452.82 score made him the leading diver out of the 18 who qualified for the semi-finals.
Xiao and Tian were second and third respectively and it looks like the three medal positions will be a fight between the two Chinese, Sautin and another Russian Vladimir Timoshinin, who finished fourth.
Ng displayed surprising confidence from the first dive, a simple forward 11/2 somersault effort that gained him 31.68 points. Even before competition started, he was chatting and joking with Tian and Xiao on the platform and looked totally relaxed.
