U.S. women win silver medal in synchronized diving at London Olympics

Americans Abby Johnston and Kelci Bryant pose with their silver medal after finishing second in synchronized diving on Sunday. (Lars Baron / Getty Images / July 29, 2012)

LONDON -- After Kelci Bryant and Abby Johnston folded every article of clothing in their rooms, the synchronized diving tandem headed to the bus Sunday morning. En route, Johnston turned to Bryant with a muted reminder: Don't forget to bring the podium outfit. You know… just in case.

And after breakfast and some episodes of"Burn Notice"and "Pretty Little Liars," bobbing along to the music in her headphones, contemplating a meet that would be her last, Bryant was in a happy place and offered her own reminder to Johnston: No matter what, we've done amazing things. I love you.

"We had this weird moment," Bryant said. "It was super corny. SUPER corny."

"It was," Johnston said. "Afterwards we were both like, that was corny, put our headphones on and just walked away."

They had one more thing to do, as it happens. They ended the United States' profound Olympic diving medal drought, with Bryant teaming with Johnston for silver in three-meter synchronized diving, the first American hardware in diving since 2000 and the first American synchronized diving medal in history.

It wasn't close to the dominant Chinese tandem of He Zi and Wu Minxia, who won gold with a score of 346.20, a healthy 24.30 points ahead of Bryant and Johnston. But finally standing on the podium allowed the U.S. diving squad to get its head above water, so to speak, as Bryant and Johnston plunged under it.

"It's definitely been spoken about," Bryant said of the dearth of diving medals. "Everyone has said something about wanting to get those medals that we haven't been able to get. ... It's a goal for any country to walk away with as many medals as they can get. I think that this is a great start for USA Diving."

Bryant and Johnston first dived as a team in 2010 at a meet in Mexico City, picking up a bronze medal after practicing together for all of one week.

"We were both kind of like, huh, yeah, we're pretty good together," Johnson said.

Since September, they have dived with no one else. Their international results in 2012 included one fourth-place, two third-place and one second-place finish. Still, there was an element of surprise to Sunday's results.

"We definitely expected a lot out of ourselves, and obviously we wanted a medal, but we also knew we could only control ourselves," Bryant said. "Our goal was to hit every one of our dives to the best that we could do. We did that. The medal is definitely a good bonus."

Bryant only folded her garments after Johnston did it first as part of her personal ritual, but now she'd return to her room Sunday bearing a shiny new accessory to go with fastidiously creased clothing. She went out with a silver medal. A tidy ending all around.

bchamilton@tribune.com

twitter @ChiTribHamilton

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