Alicia Blagg completed her injury comeback to claim the women's 1m springboard diving title at the British Gas National Cup in Southend.
Blagg, who improved her previous highest score to 274.60 in the preliminaries, took to the final with confidence and excelled from the start. She scored 57.60 for her first dive and didn’t look back from there.
“I wasn’t expecting anything from it because I’ve just come back from a fractured wrist so I’m over the moon with that performance," said Blagg, who finished ahead of Grace Reid and Francesca Del Celo.
“It was injured at the beginning of September so I’ve not been training properly for about five months and that’s a long time.
“My coach told me to go back in for the experience because it’s my first competition of the whole season. We weren’t really expecting anything from it so to come out with two personal bests is amazing.”
Olympic bronze medallist Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow settled for silver in the men's 3m synchro, with James Heatly and Sam Thornton taking gold.
Jack Laugher claimed the men's springboard title ahead of Oliver Dingley and James Denny while new pair Rebecca Gallantree and Lois Toulson won their first National Cup title in the women’s 10m synchro.
“We’re really pleased to win with that score,” said Gallantree.
“We’ve not been doing synchro together for long and this is our first time out together at Nationals so we’re really chuffed.
“We started working together at Leeds at the beginning of the season but they were only little bits. Last month I was out for a while through injury so it’s only been a few weeks together working for this event.
“I started diving with Alicia [Blagg] when she was 12 so Lois is a little bit older but they’re completely different. But it works having a partnership with one experienced and one very talented young diver.”
© Sportsbeat 2014