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Speaker 1: Quest.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Welcome friends to the Christian o'connells Show podcast.

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Speaker 1: Christian O'Connell's Golden Moments coming down to the Games in Paris.

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Speaker 1: Matthew Mitcham at the two thousand and eight Beijing Olympics

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Speaker 1: winning gold on the ten meter platform.

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Speaker 2: Diving is a sport of absolute precision, because if you

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Speaker 2: give it too much, then you're going to over rotate it,

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Speaker 2: or if you don't give it quite enough, then you're

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Speaker 2: going to have to compensate in other ways, so you

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Speaker 2: have to replicate it the exact same every single time.

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Speaker 2: When I was going into my last dive, I was

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Speaker 2: standing in the stairwell, you know, waiting for the Chinese

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Speaker 2: diver to go before me. But when he went, I

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Speaker 2: heard the whole crowd go oh, and I didn't know

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Speaker 2: if that was a good or a bad ooh if

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Speaker 2: I blocked my ears and went la la la la, la, la,

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Speaker 2: la la la as the judges read out the scores,

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Speaker 2: because I didn't want that to affect my dive at all.

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Speaker 2: And then when it was my turn to go, I

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Speaker 2: must have been present enough because I was doing my

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Speaker 2: hair as I'm walking to the end of the platform,

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Speaker 2: you know, clearly, like aware that millions of eyes are

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Speaker 2: watching me. But you know, once I actually got to

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Speaker 2: the end, it was just one of those in the

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Speaker 2: zone moments where you know, time kind of slows down

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Speaker 2: and the rows of the stands on either side just

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Speaker 2: fade to nothingness, and I just remember thinking to myself,

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Speaker 2: you know, there's nothing more I can do now, so

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Speaker 2: just relax, enjoy yourself and have fun. And I don't

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Speaker 2: remember the dive itself, but I remember coming to like

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Speaker 2: underneath the water. I remember staying under the water. When

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Speaker 2: I couldn't stay under the water any longer. I finally

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Speaker 2: broke the surface and the whole crowd was just going

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Speaker 2: absolutely bananas. So that's when I knew that I had

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Speaker 2: absolutely nailed it. And then the scores came up and

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Speaker 2: it was just ten ten nine and a half, ten

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Speaker 2: half nine and a half, and I lost it. That's

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Speaker 2: when the entire diving community just engulfed me. It was

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Speaker 2: just such a special moment. During the metal ceremony, I

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Speaker 2: remember when I was standing on the podium having this

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Speaker 2: most profound sense of relief. You know, I was so broke,

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Speaker 2: like I was literally living off cereal and baked beans

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Speaker 2: on toast and noodles. Everything that I'd been through up

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Speaker 2: until that point had been worth it. It was just joy,

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Speaker 2: like so much joy and disbelief. And I think the

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Speaker 2: thing that is like most special to me I became

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Speaker 2: the first ever openly gay Olympic champion, which is really special.

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Speaker 1: The Christian O'Connell Show podcast