Bromley diver continues build up for Olympic Games (From News Shopper)

Bromley diver continues build up for Olympic Games

3:20pm Wednesday 8th February 2012 in Other Sport

IN the first of his new monthly columns ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games, Bromley diver Nick Robinson-Baker tells TOM REYNOLDS about his preparations for the big event.

THIS month is all about the FINA Diving World Cup which is going to be my first – and only – taste of competing in the Olympic venue pre-London 2012.

The competition acts as the Olympic test event and that is a massively exciting thing for me, but I’m also looking forward to the aftermath and the chance to gorge on junk food.

I spend the year really looking after my diet and making sure I eat properly, so when a competition ends I like to have some fish and chips.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t let the diet go out of the window for a couple of days but it’s good to do it.

Hopefully the burger will taste even better having got a top-six finish at the World Cup.

It’ll be good to be at the Olympic venue but that is the only time I’ll be going there.

An Olympics is such a once in a lifetime opportunity that in my opinion you don’t want to do anything which is not going to make you as star struck as possible when you get there.

You don’t want to do anything that is going to spoil it on the day so I think once will be enough. Myself and my synchro partner Chris Mears are confident we can get into the top six at the World Cup and if we don’t, it certainly won’t be for a lack of support.

I think I will have about 25 to 30 people in the Nick Robinson-Baker fan club watching me and cheering me on, which is going to be a lot more than at the actual Olympics.

For the Games I could only get 10 tickets, so it is going to be great to have so many people watching me in London at the test event.

At the minute training is not about lots of hard work, I did most of the hard stuff during the winter so it is about making sure I am just getting my dives perfect and working on smaller things.

I know swimmers have a taper in their programme where they take it easier in the run up to a major event but it is not really the same for us.

I’ll just keep working and making sure my dives are perfect for what is going to be a big competition for us.

We ended up in the top eight at the World Championships last year so it would be nice to improve on that.

Fingers crossed the post-London burgers taste sweet.

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