The star diving duo making their Olympic Games reunion in Paris this July

After injury kept dynamic diving duo Anabelle Smith and Maddison Keeney apart in Tokyo the pair are back together in Paris. Smith shares her and Keeney’s journey in the latest En Route to Paris podcast.

The dynamic duo are back together.

After injury forced them to split for the last Olympics in Tokyo, Australia’s star dive pairing of Anabelle Smith and Maddison Keeney will reunite in Paris.

Bronze medallists in the women’s 3-metre synchro event at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Smith, 31, and Keeney, 28, have already booked their tickets to France before the Australian diving trials take place this week.

They secured their early nomination by winning silver at this year’s world titles in Qatar and can’t wait to team up in Paris after shoulder and knee injuries ruled Keeney out of a second Olympic appearance in Tokyo.

“It’s been a long time now where we’ve been competing in all the different competitions together,” Smith told the En Route to Paris podcast.

How will Anabelle Smith and Maddison Keeney go in Paris?

“Especially over the last few years with Covid and not being able to compete as much, I think it’s more special now.

“And we do get to do it again, because we thought at one point that we might never do that.”

Smith and Keeney have been competing together for around a decade and have enjoyed amazing success, teaming up to win gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Subscribe to the En Route To Paris podcast

Speaking to former Australian water polo player and three time Olympian Rowie Webster, Smith said one of the benefits she had in working with Keeney in synchronised diving was that the two had similar physiques.

“We’ve grown together and obviously been together for a long time now,” Smith said.

“It is a pretty seamless process, and it probably looks harder than it is.

Anabelle Smith and Maddison Keeney

“We’re really lucky that Maddie and I are both super strong divers and sort of match each other’s power. And that’s why we make good synchro divers, because our diving is so similar.

“That’s also, I think, contributed to our long success.

“A lot of countries will have a synchro team where there’s one really strong diver and then someone who’s still a great diver, but they’re really constantly trying to match the other.”

Smith has had her own injury problems in the last few years, battling an Achilles problem, but is back to full fitness now and told En Route to Paris she can’t wait for her fourth Olympic appearance after debuting at London more than a decade ago.

“It’s so wild to think back to 2012. It was the time of our lives,” Smith said.

“London, it’s probably still my favourite Games, just given that I was that sport obsessed, Olympic crazy kid who dreamt of going to the Olympic Games. So that realisation that I was actually there on the Australian team among some of my sporting idols was just like bonkers to me.

“I was so naive to just everything, which in one way was probably good because I wasn’t really affected by the pressure. I didn’t really feel pressure. I was just there to sort of do the best that I could and enjoy the experience.”