Michael Hixon competes at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials on June 26, 2016 in Indianapolis.
Michael Hixon, who won a silver medal in his Olympic debut in the men’s 3-meter synchronized event in Rio, combined with Andrew Capobianco to win a bronze medal in the same event Friday in Montreal.
Their medal-winning dives came on the first day of a three-day FINA World Series event. They were the only Americans to win medals in four synchro events Friday. Americans Brooke Schultz and Samantha Bromberg combined to take fourth in the women’s 3-meter synchronized final.
Hixon and Capobianco, the men’s 3-meter 2019 NCAA champion, finished in third place with a combined score of 416.49, beating out Evgenii Kuznetsov and Nikita Shleikher of Russia by .26 points. Yuan Cao and Siyi Xie of China won the finals with a score of 457.14, and Mexico’s Jahir Ocampo Marroquin and Rommel Pacheco Marrufo placed second with a score of 433.02.
After scoring just 48.60 points on each of their first two dives, Hixon and Capobianco were just getting warmed up. They scored 83.64 on their third dive and nailed a podium finish by scoring 85.50 on their sixth, and final, dive. They received scores of 8 from three judges in the final dive, a 109C dive that includes 4.5 forward somersaults.
Hixon will also compete in the men’s 3-meter individual event on Saturday.
Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
