Canadians Rylan Wiens, Nathan Zsombor-Murray win Olympic bronze in 10m synchro diving

Divers Ryan Wiens and Nathan Zsombor-Murray captured Canada’s second bronze medal at the Paris Olympics on Monday.

They scored 422.13 points behind China (490.35) and Great Britain (463.44) in the men’s 10-metre platform synchronized event.

Wiens and Zsombor-Murray solidified their spot on the podium by scoring 79.68 points on the sixth and final dive — back 2 1/2 somersaults, 1 1/2 twists in the pike position.

They also came up big in the fourth round, delivering their highest score (83.25) on a dive with the highest degree of difficulty (3.7) — forward 4 1/2 somersaults in a tuck position.

“It still doesn’t seem real,” Zsombo-Murray of Pointe-Claire, Que., told CBC Sports. “I was pretty excited when I saw the scoreboard. After 16 years of non-stop hard work it’s overwhelming.”

“I don’t tear up very often, but I started to well up before we stepped on [the podium],” added Wiens, who hails from Pike Lake, Sask. “Looking up to my parents in the stands and my very first coach behind me, being able to share this moment with all my family who made it here is truly a moment I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

Wiens and Zsombor-Murray clinched an Olympic berth in February with a fifth-place performance at the world aquatics championships in Doha, Qatar.

They first began working together in Japan in practice at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics after Vincent Riendeau, Zsombor-Murray’s then-synchro partner, injured his back in training.

Riendeau and Zsombor-Murray placed fifth before ending their diving partnership after two years, with the former retiring to concentrate on his university studies in electric engineering.

“As soon as we did that [practice] session … the goal is an Olympic medal in 2024,” Wiens told The Canadian Press in June 2022.

The pair collected world bronze in 2022 and later stood atop the podium at the FINA Diving Grand Prix in Calgary.

“Synchronized diving comes easily to us,” Zsombor-Murray of Pointe-Claire, Que., said at the time. “We’re both strong as individual competitors, so when we dive together, everything flows well.”