PARIS — Rylan Wiens still remembers the first time he met Nathan Zsombor-Murray. It was 2012 and both were competing in junior national championships in Saskatoon, where Wiens still lives.
“He was just some little kid, I was just some little kid. And from there we went through the age groups competing together and got really close the older we got. And then we came out two of the best 10m divers and happened to somehow make the Olympics and get a bronze medal,” Wiens said Monday at the Olympic Aquatics Centre moments after he and Quebec’s Zsombor-Murray captured that Olympic bronze in the men’s synchronized 10m platform dive. “It’s unbelievable.”
The pair scored 422.13 points over six dives to finish third behind China (490.35) and Great Britain (463.44).
Tied for second after two well-executed dives, Wiens and Zsombor-Murray fell back to third following a strong performance from Great Britain. Then Wiens, in his words, “messed up” on the fourth dive and Zsombor-Murray, in his, “messed up” on the fifth, leaving room for Mexico and Ukraine to sneak into the final medal position on the sixth and final dive.
“I left it a little too close for comfort so I was definitely stressed, very stressed before we had to watch the Ukrainians and the Mexicans go,” Zsombor-Murray said.
It wasn’t until Mexico’s score flashed across the screen that the pair knew they were Olympic medalists, having outscored the fourth-place team by less than 3.5 points.
“I was jumping in the air, I was hugging (Wiens), I felt really light headed. It’s just overwhelming, incredible jubilation, and it’s the pinnacle of what we’ve been working on for 16, 17 years, so I’m over the moon right now,” Zsombor-Murray said.
China topped the podium in every diving event except the synchronized 10m platform dive at the 2020 Tokyo Games and its team of Junjie Lian and Hao Yang, who are three-time world champions, came into the event a heavy favourite. Great Britain’s Thomas Daley, who was half of the team that took gold in the synchronized 10m platform dive three years ago, was also favoured for a medal with partner Noah Williams.
But Wiens and Zsombor-Murray, aged 22 and 21, came into the Games confident they could land next to those diving juggernauts on the podium, a scenario they have been envisioning since winning bronze at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships.
While the pair have been friends and competitors since their youth, they have only been competing as a synchronized team since 2021, training with different teams in their respective home provinces, but coming together in the weeks before major competitions to dive together. Both made their Olympic debuts in Tokyo on the individual 10m platform (Wiens finished 19th while Zsombor-Murray finished 13th, just missing the finals) and Zsombor-Murray competed in the synchronized 10m platform dive with partner Vincent Riendeau, who retired after those Games.
In fact, Wiens and Zsombor-Murray came close to making their international synchro debut in Tokyo when Riendeau became injured two days before competition, forcing Wiens and Zsombor-Murray to come up with a routine they could do together.
“We were pretty pleased. It was immediately obvious that that would be the next synchro partnership,” Zsombor-Murray said.
And while they have seen a lot of success, including silver at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the Santiago 2023 Pan Am Games and the 2024 World Aquatics Diving World Cup, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Wiens suffered a back injury that forced him to withdraw from the 2023 world championships.
“All I’ve got to say is I’m grateful that I had Nathan beside me,” Wiens said Monday. “He was patient. I didn’t dive for almost four months, came back, was inconsistent with training, but in the last six months we’ve been on it, we’ve been training hard and coming together and we really came together when it really mattered in the Olympics.”
His back on Monday was feeling 95 per cent — “not 100 per cent, but you don’t need to be 100 per cent to get an Olympic medal,” Wiens said with a grin.
Next week, Wiens and Zsombor-Murray will transition from teammates to competitors as they face off in the individual 10m platform preliminaries on Aug. 9 starting at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET).
“We obviously want each other to do amazing,” Wiens says. “Obviously I want to get a medal, he wants to get a medal, but at the end of the day it comes down to who dives the best and it’s going to be an awesome competition and I haven’t even thought about it yet but I’m excited for it but I’m just soaking it in right now for synchro.”