Former IU diver Loukas finishes 8th in 3-meter springboard

Competing in her second straight Olympic Games, former IU diver and 2009 graduate Christina Loukas finished eighth in the 3-meter springboard finals Sunday afternoon at the Aquatics Centre in London.
 
Loukas completed her five final-round dives with a total score of 332.10, improving on her ninth place finish from the 2008 Beijing Games in the same event.
 
Loukas was a top-eight diver during the entire three-day event, placing seventh after preliminaries with a score of 330.45 and sixth after semifinals with 339.75 points. Unlike Olympic Trials, scores in the Olympics are reset to zero before each round.
 
Loukas’ performance on Sunday was not good enough to be near medal position, however, as China’s Wu Minxia and He Zi earned gold and silver medals respectively. American teammate Cassidy Krug finished in seventh place, ahead of Loukas by 10.75 points.
 
While at IU, Loukas was the 2009 NCAA champion in the 3-meter dive and earned four Big Ten individual titles. She was named Big Ten Diver of the Year on multiple occasions and an NCAA All-American eight times.
 
Loukas left Bloomington in 2010, and told the IDS in July 2012 that at the time, she “felt out of place and needed a change, a new environment.”
 
She now trains at the Woodlands Diving Academy in Texas under former Olympian and U.S.A. Diving coach Kenny Armstrong.

— Jordan Littman