Jack Laugher’s diving partner Daniel Goodfellow hoping practice will make perfect ahead of Tokyo Olympics

Great Britain’s 3m synchro partnership are still in the embryonic days of their relationship but like everyone in the sport have been rendered inactive during the coronavirus pandemic.

In their one full season together, Goodfellow and Laugher won a pair of World Series medals and a silver medal at the 2019 FINA World Championships.

They teamed up together at the end of 2018, after Chris Mears – the man Laugher won Olympic gold with in Rio – made his break from the sport a permanent one.

But from such a promising start the pair have been stuck in neutral.

“We just need to know how the rest of the year looks like, we’re not sure how many competitions we will get,” said Goodfellow, who moved up to Yorkshire to join Laugher at the City of Leeds Diving Club after starting in his hometown of Cambridge.

“Nobody wants to go to Tokyo with the Olympics being their only competition of the year. Usually you’d want at least five or six competitions, that’s what we had going into 2016. Being a new partnership every competition you do is an experience, so we’d like as many as possible but we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not going to be that many, so we have to prepare ourselves for the fact Tokyo may be the only competition we do this year.

“It’s a pity because we were on that upward trajectory.

“The partnership wasn’t easy to start with because synchro springboard is really hard, you’ve both got different styles and our first couple of competitions weren’t exactly how we wanted them to go. And then boom the pandemic hits.”

To help with their synchronicity during lockdown, the pair played online video games together.

Goodfellow is happy in the company of Laugher, and certainly not over-awed by the status of the Harrogate athlete who is Britain’s most successful Olympic diver after his gold and silver medals in Rio.

After all, Goodfellow’s last partner was Tom Daley, with the lesser-known diver leaving the 10m board behind because of a shoulder injury exacerbated by hitting the water at 30mph.

“There was the same expectation level when I joined Tom in the 10m,” said Goodfellow, 24, who won an Olympic bronze off the top board with Daley in Rio and a Commonwealth Games gold medal two years later.

“When you’re doing it with someone as experienced as Tom then people expect you to do well regardless.

“I guess it’s a similar pressure to when I dive with Jack. I’ve had pressure with both partnerships, slightly different, but it’s not something I’m not used to.”

Dan Goodfellow is working with Purplebricks to encourage the nation to get behind Team GB on their journey to Tokyo. Visit @PurplebricksUK. To enter the draw to receive one of 2,020 limited edition prints, visit https://page.purplebricks.co.uk/teamgb_homesupport/

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