Olympics: Ex-BYU diver has sights set on the gold

On the morning of what should have been the most glorious day of his athletic life, Smithfield's Justin Wilcock wasn't sure he could do it.
    The pain in his lower back was killing him, and Wilcock seriously doubted he would be able to hurl himself off the platform to twist and flip his way into the water below - even if it was the Olympic Games awaiting him. He even told his coach, initially, with tears in his eyes, that he was going to withdraw.
    "I was definitely distracted by it," he said.
    Somehow, the former Brigham Young diver managed to compete, despite an agonizing stress fracture in his back that would require months away from his sport in order to heal. And even though Wilcock finished dead last in the 3-meter springboard at the 2004 Athens Games in Greece - by some distance, too, after scoring a zero on one dive and hitting the board on another - the experience hardly battered him into retirement.
    "Actually, what it did, it kind of strengthened my resolve to compete again in the Olympics," he said. "But to compete at my potential and go for the gold medal, not just compete. It really just strengthened that resolve and gave me a new goal to go for and just made it all that much more of a challenge."
    Nearly four years later, the 28-year-old former Sky View High standout is closing in on his new goal.
    The Beijing Games in China are just more than four months away, and Wilcock is starting to polish the rough edges of his long and difficult comeback.
    He has enjoyed some sensational moments, such as scoring a personal-best 510 points in his final round of dives during trials for the recent FINA World Cup in Beijing - that showed "my dream of winning a gold medal really is realistic," he said - but has not quite qualified for the last three world-level events and is still searching for his old consistency.
    "I've struggled to get back to where I was competing internationally," he said.
    That's a particular concern, too.
    Not only did his inconsistency keep him from qualifying for the World Cup event (he wound up at the FINA Grand Prix in Shenzhen, instead, where he finished sixth), but the U.S. Olympic Team will be determined by a composite score from all of the rounds of diving at the Olympic Trials in Indianapolis in June - rather than only the scores from a final round, the usual practice.
    "My big focus going into the Olympic Trials is really to work on my consistency, especially in the early rounds," Wilcock said. "I was happy to see that in China and have some good early rounds, because that's what it's going to take at the trials."
   
    A lot has changed
   
    While Wilcock strives to do everything exactly the same, every time he leaps off the board, much has changed for him since the day he so dramatically captured the Olympic spirit by climbing the ladder in agony.
    Though his parents, Scott and Cathy, still live in Smithfield, he has changed coaches and moved from Texas to Indianapolis, where he trains with national team coaches Wenbo Chen and John Wingfield. He also married professional photographer Carol Acord nearly two years ago, and has taken up synchronized diving - though he and partner Burkley Showe train together only occasionally, because Showe lives in Columbus, Ohio.
    "We are a bit of a long shot, just because our difficulty is not as high as some of our competitors, nationally," Wilcock said. "But we match up pretty well, as far as being synchronized. So if we're on, we can definitely make some noise."
    Mostly, though, the past four years have been about the comeback.
    After the Athens Games, Wilcock spent five months "completely out of the water" to allow his back time to heal. The first three of those months, he didn't do "anything remotely related to diving," he said, just a lot of rehabilitation exercises and the slow preparation to return to the pool.
    In that time, he had returned to BYU to finish work on his horticulture degree, and had a hard time juggling school with the rehab he needed.
    The following May, he made the difficult decision to split from his coach and move to Indianapolis, where he works under the more "rigid" and "straightforward" Chen and Wingfield.
    "I was able to get on a regimen where I was kind of pushing through the injury but not so much to the point where I was re-injuring it," he said.
    Finally, a year and a half after his last excruciating splash in the Athens pool, Wilcock felt as if he was back.
    "He's a fighter who doesn't give up," his wife said. "Coming back from such a bad injury was not only hard on him physically, but mentally, as well. He has learned the power of the mind and how to redirect his negative thoughts into positive ones."
    The only thing left, now, is the final countdown. Wilcock will compete at the USA Diving Spring National Championships in Minneapolis later this month, where he hopes to qualify for the FINA Grand Prix in Canada and the USA Grand Prix in Florida in May. After those events, he will have about a month until the Olympic Trials, for which he has already qualified.
    And then, with any luck, Wilcock will climb the ladder to the Olympic diving board, but this time without a searing pain in his back. And perhaps, this time, he will emerge from the water with a medal around his neck, instead of a lingering sense of unfulfillment.
    "I've had so many ups and downs and challenges and unseen trials come up," he said. "But they've all helped get me to this point."
    mcl@sltrib.com
   
    Justin Wilcock file
    Age: 28
    Residence: Indianapolis
    Hometown: Smithfield, Utah
    High school: Sky View
    College: Brigham Young University
    Highlights
    * Competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics despite a stress fracture in his back that caused him to finish last.
    * Scored a career-best 510 on his final round of dives at the U.S. World Cup team selection meet in January.
    * Three-time diver of the year in college, twice in the MWC and once in the WAC.