Bronze medalist United States' Delaney Schnell holds up her medal following the women's 10m platform diving final at the World Swimming Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, Wednesday, July 17, 2019. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man )
Tucson’s Delaney Schnell has been one of America’s leading junior divers for almost a decade. Last week, she became one of its leading divers of any rank. She won a bronze medal in the 10-meter platform event at the FINA World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, and now, entering her junior year at Arizona, is near the top of the radar for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Schnell arrived at Arizona a year after two-time Olympic silver medalist Michele Mitchell left the UA swimming and diving program, taking a job with the Mission Viejo Nadadores in Southern California. Schnell has persevered and continued to improve through three diving coaches at Arizona. Schnell continues to cut into China’s dominance of women’s diving; the Chinese have won seven of the last nine Olympic platform diving gold medals. Now Schnell is fully on the map, trying to get where Mitchell and another former UA head diving coach, Cynthia Potter, a 1976 Olympic bronze medalist, have been.
