Alexandre Despatie's path to the 2012 Olympics in London has been anything but smooth.
The 26-year-old diver from Montreal placed seventh in a three-metre synchronized diving event at a Grand Prix diving competition in Rostock, Germany, on Saturday in his first international competition since June of 2010.
It was not the result that he expected, especially for a former world champion and a guy who owns silver and bronze world championship medals in synchro.
"Nothing short of disaster," Despatie said in a tweet. "But the ice is broken, I guess."
"It's all quite confusing to be honest," Despatie said Sunday from Germany. "There was a lot of frustration, a lot of things going through my mind."
Because of a knee injury, Despatie was forced to miss the world championships last fall and, with it, a chance to qualify some important Canadian berths for the Olympics. He will have one chance left, but that comes at his next competition, a test event in London Feb. 20 through 26.
The time clock is ticking.
Over the weekend, Despatie competed in only the synchronized event, because he failed to qualify for the individual event at trials that took place last year, when he was injured.
That means, he'll have to put everything on the line in the London test event, for berths in both the three-metre springboard and the three-metre synchro event. If he qualifies a berth for the Olympics, it will be his fourth Games, and he's still chasing the elusive gold medal. He's won two silvers.
Despatie and partner Reuben Ross of Regina started out strongly in the synchro event on Saturday, but as the dives became increasingly complex, the team began to crumble. They had been second on the first two dives, but on the final two, there were seventh.
Despatie said he has mixed emotions about his comeback and doesn't want to focus on the scores. He's discovered in the past few weeks that his knee is holding up to intense training and competition. He's healthy. He said he's as motivated as ever.
"The problem was in my head," he said. Training is one thing. Competition brings another set of pressures and tension, especially with Olympic berths on the line in a couple of weeks. It was only about a month ago that Despatie started to train the "hurdle" – the approach to the dive from a springboard. The hurdle is vital to the success of the dive. He's had to rush his training a bit to be ready for competition. And he's not quite ready, a tough hurdle in itself for a perfectionist.
"I don't have any explanation regarding what happened in the event," Despatie said. "All I can do now is not dwell on those mistakes and how I felt, but try to understand what was going on in my head."
He thought he was focused going into each dive. Maybe he was not as focused on the correct things, he said. He's been talking to coach Arturo Miranda about it and, "We're going to work on a few things in the next week to make sure that something like that doesn't happen in London."
He is grateful that he's had a chance to compete and iron out the wrinkles before the important London event, where he needs to finish within the top 18 to qualify a berth for Canada. He now has time to react to what happened.
And, judging by his tweets, he has plenty of support from fellow athletes. He's been exchanging quick notes with alpine skier Erik Guay, with whom he trained extensively during the summer in Montreal.
"We're good buddies," Despatie said of Guay. He was able to watch Guay's races over the past two weeks while he was undertaking a diving training camp in Madrid. "That was really cool," Despatie said. "We're both supporting each other. I think summer and winter athletes alike, we're all just part of the big Canadian team. That's a good feeling."