Brittany's Story
The youngest athlete on the 410 strong Australian Olympic Team at the London 2012 Games, 16-year-old Brittany Broben showed remarkable poise to block out the pressures of Olympic competition and bring home silver in the 10m platform event.
Broben got into diving at the age of 11 after Olympic gold medallist Chantelle Newbery encouraged her to trial at a talent identification program. She had been competing at state and national level in gymnastics. She went on to claim silver in the 10m platform at the 2010 FINA Junior World Championships in Tucson, Arizona.
The young Queenslander was involved in a gripping 10m individual final with Melissa Wu, Alexandra Croak and Loudy Wiggins at the Australian Diving nomination trials in Adelaide 2012. Despite being far outweighed in experience, Broben held her nerve to edge out Commonwealth Games gold medallist Croak for the second 10m individual position on the Australian team after Wu claimed the victory.
Broben got off to a strong start at her debut Olympics qualifying from the preliminary round sitting in 4th with a score of 339.80 leaving her one position higher than her teammate Wu. She received an incredible boost for her confidence as she improved in the semi-final scoring 359.55 to finish third heading into the final.
Despite China’s Ruolin Chen dominating proceedings from the outset, the race to fill the other spots on the medal dais was incredibly close and tense. After a solid first dive, Broben put together three strong dives before only scoring 57.75 on her fifth attempt. While a similar score on her last dive could have relegated her to last in the twelve strong field, Broben bounced back to nail her Back 2 1/2 Somersault 1 1/2 Twists Pike, scoring 81.60 to win a well deserved silver medal.
