London, July 23 (IANS) Mexican diver Ivan Garcia believes he and his partner German Sanchez can overcome the Chinese challenge to take the gold medal in the 10-metre platform synchronized event at the London Olympics.
Garcia and Sanchez will be up against the local pair of Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield as well as the powerful Chinese duo of Huo Liang and Qu Bo, Xinhua reports.
However, far from being intimidated, 18-year-old Garcia is relishing the challenge.
"German and I are in good form," Garcia told Xinhua.
"We have been working harder, we are well prepared and each dive is getting better. We are very confident and although we may have our muscles a bit tense at the moment, we are feeling very good," he said, adding that the tension was probably due to having only flown into London Friday.
"We have been doing a lot of stretching to relax and we will train better with each passing day," he said.
Garcia and Sanchez have been in fine form of late and that has given them the confidence to believe they can take on the favourites and win.
"I am very relaxed because we have performed well recently. We finished second in the World Cup and won gold in the Pan American Games, but we have to keep up with those performances and with hard work in training and what better place to do it than to come to my first Olympics with hopes of winning a medal," he said, explaining that he and Sanchez had been working hard to increase the difficulty of their dives to unprecedented levels.
"The doors are open for us and we have everything in our favour to beat everyone... even the Chinese, because we have a level of difficulty that is the highest in history. I feel, thanks to our training, we control the most difficult dives and I hope that will be the key," commented Garcia.
"I feel as if I am very lucky, because there are a lot of sportspersons who would like to be here. But it has been hard work and now we have to take advantage of everything we have in our favour and hope things work out well," he commented.
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