Relieved, refreshed, and renewed: Alexandre Despatie comes through ... finally!

“It may be silver, but it’s like gold to me,” said Despatie who first made his mark in international diving at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, winning gold in the 10-metre platform, at the tender age of 13.

“I executed six high-quality dives, despite some ups and downs in the preliminaries,” Despatie told <@RiCourrier Laval<@$p> in a telephone interview from Beijing Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

“I’ve really had a difficult year, starting on the wrong foot with a fifth-place finish at the World Cup in February. Matters worsened when I hurt my back and fractured my foot just four months before the Olympics,” he explained.

The gold medal went to China’s He Chong (572.90 points). Current world titleholder Kai Qin (also of China) had to settle for the bronze (530.10 points to Despatie’s 536.65).

It was all decided in the final of six dives, with other divers setting the bar high before Despatie's last flurry of points. Russia’s Dmitry Sautin earned 512.65 points on his final dive to sit in medal territory behind Kai Qin at 530.10, but that was before the final dives of eventual first and second place grabbers Chong and Despatie.

Despatie racked up 96.90 in his sixth and final dive, icing the silver medal with a brilliant effort, a front 2 ½ with two twists, replicating his similar finish in Athens when he had to dig deep and come up with a spectacular final effort to finish second.

“Coming out of the water, I had the shivers all over. I knew I had pulled off a superb final dive. There are no words to describe what I was feeling,” he confided. “The objective was to make progress in each step of the competition, and that’s what I did. All doubts were dispelled after a good third dive, the one that usually gives me trouble,” he added.

The three-time world champion now has four years to set his sights and prepare for another shot at wining gold, in London in 2012.