Olympic diving: Tom Daley wins bronze

I'd like to think he was, Tom. That's all from me tonight - thanks for your time and company. See you tomorrow afternoon at the boxing and then ... it's all over. Good night.

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Just to reiterate, this man who is better at diving from a 10m platform than anybody else, is afraid of heights. Cue the Star Spangled Banner and some tears from the American, who must have a piece of grit in his eye.

He looks pleased enough with his silver medal, but then he seems a fairly laid back chap.

Daley bounds on to the podium and punches the air with both hands - the judges could take points from for that; his symmetry left a lot to be desired.

Joey Barton maskes a good point there on Twitter - in between studying for and completing his A-levels, Tom Daley has had to help nurse his father through cancer before eventually burying him, while simultaneously trying to fit in enough training to secure a podium position at his home Olympics. Tom Daley is 18 years old. The boy has balls of steel.

1. David Boudia (USA) 568.65

2. Qiu Bo (China) 566.85 (-1.80)

3. Tom Daley (Great Britain) 556.95 (-11.70)

4. Victor Minibaev (Russia) 527.80 (-40.85)

5. Jose Antonio Guerra (Cuba) 527.70 (-40.95)

Daley goes into the drink and is joined by the entire British backroom team, who go in after him to celebrate fully dressed. Many of them are women in white T-shirts, which leave little to the imagination, a state of affairs that several of them quickly become aware of upon leaving the pool.

David Boudia from the USA tops the leaderboard, China's Qiu Bo comes second and Tom Daley comes third. What a splendid evening's entertainment that was ...

He absolutely nails his back two-and-a-somersault to go into the silver medal position.

Not the perfect entry and a lot of splash will cost him. He goes into fifth place, which means Daley is guaranteed a medal. Will it be silver or bronze? Over to you Qiu Bo.

And his final dive is a heroic effort under pressure. He moves ahead Daley into gold medal position. Daley is in silver medal position with two Chinese divers to go.

He's done it! He scores 90.75 (one judge gave him a 10) and goes to 556.95. He's pretty much nailed on for a medal and possible a gold. He clambers out of the pool and hugs his coach.

Martin Wolfram appears to have dislocated his shoiulder with his last dive of the competition - c'mon Tommy boy.

Seriously - it's horrible. I can't remember ever feeling this nervous and I'm neither British nor much of a diving fan. It's a privilege to be here. One more diver, Martin Wolfram of Germany to go and then Daley's up with a reverse three-and-a-half in the tuck position. He'll be rotating back towards the platform, but not too close and not too far away. Aghhhh!

Daley's last dive is "easy", with a low tariff of 3.3, compared to Boudia (3.6), Lin Yue (3.6) and Qiu Bo (3.6). He needs to get his own dive perfect and hope they make errors.

The announcer has just informed the 80,000 people present that Daley is leading the diving with one leap to go and they've gone bonkers! I honestly didn't think he had a snowball's chance in hell of winning this competition - at this point, barring disaster, he'll consider bronze an abject failure.

1. Tom Daley (Great Britain) 468.20

2. David Boudia (USA) 466.05

3. Qui Bo (China) 466.05

4. Lin Yue (China) 436.05*

* This may be a point or two out.

This is sensational stuff here - Tom Daley goes into the lead with just one dive to go! The 18-year-old from Plymouth is just one reverse three-and-a-half somersault with tuck from winning the gold medal. He's rathcheted up the pressure on his opponants and they're crumbling underneath it.

But it isn't as good! It's nowhere near as good! He scores 91.something, which means Daley has overtaken him on the leaderboard.

It's a back three-and-a-half somersault and it's sensationally good! He scores 97.20 to keep the pressure on the duo ahead of him in the standings.

The current leader David Boudia is (a) afraid of heights and (b) lucky to be in this final. He stank up the preliminaries in a big way, scraping into the semi-finals in the 18th and final place.

Tom Daley is very much in the mix here. I've seen two bad dives all night, which suggests his margin for error is zero if he's to hold on to bronze or better it. It would be an astonishing upset if neither of the Chinese won tonight, but it's not looking great for them so far. The gold medal is the American David Boudia's to lose.

Victoria Pendleton is not, to the best of my knowledge, here.

David Beckhamn is here with one of his sons.

David Boudia (USA) 374.25

Qiu Bo (China) 371.70

Tom Daley (Great Britain) 369.00

Ivan Navarro Garcia (Mexico)

Lin Yue (China)

Apologies, but they didn't flash the scores up for long enough for me to get the tallies of Garcia and Yue.

And the chinese has a shocker, making a dog's breakfast of his forward four-and-a-half somersault. At worst, Tom Daley will be in third place at the start of the penultimate round.

Daley needs a big one here - it's his highest tariff dive: forward four-and-a-half somersault with tuck. He has a run up, leaps forward and does his four-and-a-half, pulls off a magnificent entry save and nails it. As the crowd erupts, the judges ruminate and award him 98.05. He's nailed it! Absolutely nailed it! That's a splendid way to ratchet up the pressure on the three divers ahead of him in the overall standings.

The young man from Hull has beaten Ireland's John Joe Nevin with what was apparently a sensational performance in the last round. Hats off to him, he's a lovely bloke. You can see how I taught him everything he knows in this video.

He's quite clearly the best diver here, even if he isn't in the lead - his ability and consistency is astonishing, writes Guardian rolling report writer in a bid to become a David Cameron like Jonah for the Chinese diver.

David Boudia (USA) 283.50

Qiu Bo (China) 278.10

Lin Yue (China) 277.05

Tom Daley (Great Britain) 270.95

Ivan Navarro Garcia (Mexico) 264.15

Well, his fourth if you count the one he was allowed to take twice, is an armstand back triple somersault that delights the crowd and sends him to the top of the leaderboard in-running, albeit with the heavyweights still to dive in this round.

In round three his armstand back triple somersault with one-and-a-half twists goes awry and he doesn't so much arrow into the water as flump in back first. 68 points - that was about 15 degrees away from being very, very painful.

"Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine!" she says, reading out the judges marks for Qiu Bo, whose armstand back triple somersault elicits gasps of admiration from all present. He enters the water with a barely audible "Pffffft!", hardly causing a ripple. He's in the lead.

He scores 86.40 for his inward three-and-a-half somersault, which my colleague Rob Booth assures Simon Hattenstone is "a good score". Hattenstone's indignant reply: "But it was a really easy one!" I'd like to see him try it.

Martin Wolfram, the leader is next up with an inward three-and-a-half somersault with tuck. He scores 85.40 - next up it's Tom Daley.

But the aquatics centre announcer has just asked patrons not to use flash photography for the fifth time this evening. Honestly, the fifth! And we're only at the start of the second round.

*I so am.

David Boudia (USA) 97.20

Martin Wolfram (Ger) 97.20

Tom Daley (GB) 91.80
Lin Yue (China) 91.20

Qui Bo (China) 91.20

His Inward three-and-a-half somersdault with tuck scores 91.20.

USA athlete David Boudia stands on his hands at the edge of the platform for what seems like an age before bending his elbows, hurling himself backwards and double somersaulting with two-and-a-half twists and tuck. I was impressed enough with the handstand, but the rest of it tickles the judges fancy and they give him 97.20.

His dive has a degree of difficulty of 3.6 and this time he nails it: 91.80, which puts him in second place in the first round, albeit with the three best qualifiers to go.

The young man from Plymouth scores a meagre 75.60 for his back two-and-a-half somersault two-and-half-twists with pike and upon alighhting from the pool, immediately launches a protest about the flashbulbs of people's cameras putting him off. He's granted a re-dive ...

And he wasn't wrong - there really isn't a great deal you can say about somebody leaping off a platform that's higher than two double deckers (buses, as opposed to chocolate bars, although it's considerably higher than two of those too) when even their most unimpressive efforts look spectacularly graceful. Martin Wolfram has garnered the best reaction so far, from the audience and the judges, scoring 97.20 for his armstand back double somersault with two-and-a-half twists.

Having walkout out in single file and been introduced to the crowd (no prizes for guessing who was most rapturously received), the divers have peeled off their tracksuits and are ready for business. Riley McCormick is first up for Canada and performs a forward three-and-a-half somersault with pike. Yup, looked OK to me. The judges give him 76.50.

The aquatics centre remains at least one third empty (two weeks ago I'd have said it was two-thirds full, but there you go), with hundreds of punters milling around outside, getting volunteers and policemen to take photographs of them standing in front of the big set of Olympic rings on the Tellytubbies type lawn. There are a lot of young ladies in Union Jack dresses and on the celeb spotting front I think I saw comedy's Ed Byrne, with what looked like his in-laws.

1. Riley McCormick (Canada)

2. Oleksandr Bondar (Ukraine)

3. Ivan Garcia Navarro (Mexico)

4. Jose Antonio Guerra (Cuba)

5. Sascha Klein (Germany)

6. Nicholas McCrory (USA)

7. Victor Minibaev (Russia)

8. Martin Wolfram (Germany)

9. Tom Daley (Great Britain)

10. David Boudia (USA)

11. Yue Lin (China)

12. Bo Qiu (China)

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Each athlete has six dives. The more difficult the dive, the higher the 'tariff' it carries.
Seven judges score the dive out of 10. The top and bottom two scores are discarded, and the remaining three scores are added together and multiplied by the tariff.
Marks are based on a host of factors, including: take-off position, flight, performance of move and entry. The quieter the splash and the straighter the back, the better.

Qiu Bo wins.

Good evening everybody and welcome to what might well turn out to be the most shambolic, halfwitted, poorly-informed coverage of preposterously good looking and chiselled men in very tight strides jumping into water in the history of aquatic sport.

It's the penultimate day of the Olympics, but I'm on my maiden excursion to the Aquatics Centre, where I am seated in the front row of the Media Tribunes box alongside my haggard looking colleagues Simon Hattenstone and Rob Booth. In the build-up to tonight's Men's 10m Platform final, we've been whiling away the past hour or so having a Who's The Most Tired competition and discussing the finer points and merits of arm-stand back triple somersaults with pike over arm-stand back double somersaults with multiple twists.

We've also mused about how great it would be if, when jumping for gold with his last dive, competition favourite Qiu Bo decided to abandon his planned back two-and-a-half somersault two-and-a-half twists and instead just ran from the back of the platform, leaped, grabbed his knees and top-bombed into the pool. It would almost certainly cost him the gold medal, but his Olympic immortality and status as a hero would be assured.

Competition starts at 8.30pm, but I'll be here from around eight with all the latest news.