 Next week, Jamaican diver Yonah Naito-Isdame secured his qualification for a third straight Olympic Games. The 28-year-old booked his spot in the 3-metre springboard event by reaching the semifinals at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar. He missed the 12-man final by two spots, but his 14th place finish was enough to confirm his place in Paris. Naito-Isdame, the first Jamaican male diver to compete at the Olympics, was born in Leeds, England to a Jamaican father and Barbadian mother. He decided to compete for Jamaica in 2012 and has since represented the Black, Green and Gold at two Olympic Games, reaching the semifinals of the 3-metre springboard in Rio and Tokyo. He also has a 2019 Pan-American Games silver medal in the 1-metre springboard. Let's welcome to the Sportsmax zone, Yonah Naito-Isdame. Yonah, how are you doing? I'm very well, thank you very much for having me. It must have been pretty late where you are, thanks for staying up by the way to have this chat with us. Of course, it's only 9.30, it's not too bad, it's not too late and I've got a late session tomorrow, so it's all good. It's always a pleasure to speak to people here in Jamaica and on this occasion with such a momentous achievement, it's really appreciative that I've got the interest as well. Yeah, talk to me about the achievement because of course you qualified by finishing 14th at the World Aquatics Championships, missing out on the final and I read somewhere where you were saying it was bittersweet because you're at a world championship after all, so you want to be in the medal round, but then although you weren't, you still qualified for the Olympics. Yeah, absolutely, it was bitter because I was diving well enough to be able to make it through to the final and it was a one mistake on one dive that meant that I couldn't make it through and I only missed that by 4 points, so that bit was bitter. It was sweet because I did the job that I went there to do. Of course, automatic qualification came with the top 12, but 14th place fortunately should be good enough to get myself a spot, but yeah, it would have been just that cherry on top of the cake to make the final, however now I've got something really exciting to work towards for the rest of the year and you know, I made the semi-final at the last two Olympics, so hopefully this time I can make the final this time round and you know, that's something that's really motivating me for the next few months. Yeah, it hasn't been a smooth road since the last Olympic Games and definitely not since the Commonwealth Games in 2022. You of course had knee surgery and an injury that occurred at the back end of 2022 and you had to deal with that for most of 2023. Where are you on that road to recovery and given everything that you've gone through in the last year, you must still be proud that you've been able to achieve this feat of qualifying for the Olympic Games again. Yeah, that's right. I had a serious knee injury at the end of 2022 and had to have surgery my first time going under the knife and you know, it was a scary experience because I thought it might be the end of my career. I didn't know if I'd be able to make it back from that injury and you know, I set my goal to qualify for Paris. I didn't know how realistic that would be because of all the work that I would have to go through to get back to the highest level, you know, to compete against the best irons in the world. It requires a lot and it requires 100% trust in my knee to be able to push through the springboard. You can see the amount of just pressure and power that has to go through that, so my knee has to cope. I worked really, really hard to get back my strength, to get back my competitive experience so that when it came to this qualification, to Doha, I was ready to compete and ready to hold my nerve under the pressure of the circumstances and you know, I'm very, very grateful that I was able to do that. It was a tough prelim, but you know, every single step of the journey back to this point really had purpose and I'm grateful that it came good at the right time. Yeah, very much the case. I'm interested, right? Because I remember when you had the injury, I think it happened in Edinburgh at the Scottish National Championships at the back end of 2022 and initially you had suggested that you don't think it was serious or that it would keep you for a long period. Did the knee injury end up being more serious than you initially thought? I think that was me speaking in hope more than anything, hoping that I wouldn't be too serious and wouldn't be too detrimental to my career and I took a 100% positive outlook on it. You know, within myself I didn't want to let the knee injury stop me from recovering, but I never knew what kind of hurdle might be in front of me, what setback I might have and you know, I set loads of goals and I set loads of target dates to recover for and fortunately we were able to be ahead of those dates and there was no relapse or any kind of issues that occurred. Everything just went really smoothly, everything went to plan and I was able to get back to a higher level much quicker than I thought I would be able to and yeah, the knee injury itself wasn't as serious as it could have been, but definitely my hope and positivity and belief helped me recover a little bit quicker. Yeah, just about six or seven months after the surgery you were competing at the CAC Games, Yona. Can you just quickly before we move on from the injury, you just referenced the fact that it was scary for you because at one point you thought it could have been a career threatening injury. What was the process of rehab like and what was your daily routine during the period of first of all healing from the knee injury and then getting your strength back? So fortunately I was able to have surgery within three days of the injury happening and that meant that I could get back on the rehab process really really quickly because of the nature of the injury I had to wear a brace on my knee which limited my leg to 30 degrees of flexion which is not a lot and I had to wear that for two months I wasn't allowed to bend my knee more than 30 degrees for two months for the tendon to be able to heal back fully and the scar tissue to heal around it to minimize the risk of re-rupting the future. So I did that. The challenge then once I took the brace off was actually getting the flexion back in my knee and being able to bend my knee slowly all the way to be able to contort into all the positions I need to contort into to be able to dive especially with tuck shapes. You know there's a lot of force there's a lot of resistance going through that when I'm spinning the air in the tuck shape so I had to work with my strength and conditioning coach to build back the strength in my quad because the quad had basically just deflated and I had to rebuild the muscle which was a tough journey and over the next couple of months I had to slowly bend my knee push through the pain of getting that flexion back and actually this dive that you're about to show now this will show the the intensity of the tuck shape that I need to make when I make it when I'm doing my dives and this was probably one of the hardest things to get back because of just the stretching that went on through the scar tissue and through the tendon and even now I still feel a little bit of resistance when trying to make those shapes but now you know I've got the full range back I've got the full strength back in the in the muscle and it now is more on the psychological side of things having the confidence to push through the board and trust that my knee will hold when I'm you know trying to do my dives yeah or you know your debut Olympic appearance in in Rio was a great experience for you um I was about to say four years after but it was five years after because the Tokyo Olympics were delayed weren't they so um you were in the semis 15th not making the final what are your targets for for Paris because you've got two Olympic Games experiences now behind you and I'm pretty certain that you're looking to make a bigger mark in Paris than you did in Rio or Tokyo absolutely diving competition is really really tough because it's not always the best dives that get the best results because it comes down to such fine margins such fast decisions so I hundred percent believe that I am a good enough diver to be able to make it into the final and um to be able to you know play around with the top of the table it's very difficult to to get medals in diving because the Chinese dominates so much but I've produced shocks before in the past I've beaten some very very good divers before in the past when I've had a really good competition uh 2016 was an example of that when I won my world silver medal so um this time round I hundred percent believe that I can be in the final and once I'm in the final anything can happen I've just got to try and take advantage of that opportunity so I'd love to improve on what I've achieved in the last two Olympic games and make it through to the Paris 2024 final yeah Yona I know that you are big on building a legacy and you have done a lot to try and improve the visibility of the discipline um diving in Jamaica and and I would suspect as well just right across the Caribbean um but 12 years on from your decision to represent the land of wooden water I can't say that at this stage we see anyone else quite coming through who from a Jamaican standpoint at least seems to be on the cusp of achieving um close anything close to what you have to this point is that a disappointment for you or would it be unrealistic on all part to expect that to happen within a 12-year period um no it's not a disappointment for me for sure and also it's not unrealistic to expect that um as well I think it definitely is realistic to expect that but unfortunately um diving requires such expertise and knowledge and I have that and I need to bring that to the island um but whilst I've been focused on my own diving career I've not had the flexibility to do such a thing um because of everything that I've had to put into myself um also diving requires you know specific facilities which Jamaica don't have at the moment um there is a diving pool in Kingston but it's not quite fit for purpose for this style of diving I definitely see talented people in Jamaica that you know could well be very good at diving if there is a structure from a young age but again that's not the case there's no program um so these are the kind of things that I am really keen to bring to Jamaica after my career and you know I I took the first step on that process last summer by running a diving camp in Kingston and 14 brave people turned up who had never really dived before and they allowed me to teach them some dives and they performed the display in front of a few friends and family and it's definitely my intention to do that again this summer after the Olympics I hope to be able to come back out to Jamaica and run another camp hopefully even more people want to come and want to learn about the sport want to learn how to do the sport and slowly we can build a community of people that are interested in diving and from there eventually in the future you know once we get the facilities up to scratch once we get a full-time coach in Jamaica and once we get a program up and running you know I am 100% certain that there will be talented divers in Jamaica it just will take a little bit of time for that to happen but um you know my first Olympic Games was all about me and my achievement personally my second Olympic Games was just proving to myself that I could do it and it wasn't just a fluke and this time around it's all about trying to create the legacy and build on the legacy of my diving career and open the opportunities for for young children in Jamaica to try diving you know it's been a long time that the sport has just been track and field and football and hopefully my three Olympic Games in the row even though I don't come from the island even though I wasn't born on the island hopefully I'll inspire kids on the island to want to try diving yeah I'm two quick ones because we're fast running out of time you speak about your three Olympic Games is there the possibility of a fourth you're going to be 29 years old in May you're a young still strong black man you could go on for another one couldn't you yeah I absolutely could um however there's various difficulties that come with diving one of the main ones is financial and that's one of them been been one of the major struggles um over my career you know I have to work um as a diving coach to make money and you know there's a lot of funding that has to happen I've been very fortunate to get a lot of support over the years um but whether that can continue for another four years I don't know yet um also physically you know I'm pushing myself to the limit and I've already shown myself that I can go over the limit and cause an injury and I'm not necessarily keen for that to happen again um so you know I want to get this cycle done another way and just see what my internal feelings are um and what feels like the best option going forward yeah and in 20 seconds Yona I notice just looking at your results over the years you seem to be better at the one meter springboard than you are at any other event in diving but of course the one meter springboard is not at the Olympic Games how much would you give for that event to be at the Olympics um actually I'm way too heavy and too tall for one meter now so it's way too hard I avoid this world championship so I just focused on three meters so I think hopefully this year it's time for me to prove that I'm better on three meters than I am on one meter all right thanks very much for that Yona Knight wisdom it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you and all the best for the remainder of the year and all the best in Paris we'll see you there for sure thank you so much I appreciate the time all right Yona Knight wisdom heading to his third Olympic Games to represent Jamaica in diving yeah lots more to come on the Sportsmax zone including a chapter about the West Indies they beat Australia by 37 runs in the third and final T20 international a consolation win but there was a record performance and some real quality bowling from the Caribbean side we'll discuss that after this