'You train your entire life for this' By Steve Simmons, SUN MEDIA

Emilie Heymans of Greenfield Park, Que. holds up the silver medal she won in women's 10-metre platform diving the Olympics in Beijing Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson)

BEIJING - The rebuilding of Emilie Heymans began the minute the Athens Olympics ended.

“It was day by day,” said her coach Yihua Li, talking about the last four years.

“Hour by hour.” It was in Athens where she fell to the floor of a room just off the pool deck, buried her face in her tear-soaked hands, her Olympic medal lost in a final dive gone wrong.

All of it followed with the words no athlete ever wants to utter. “I choked,” she said four years and a lifetime ago.

Four years later and everything changed. She was ice at the Cube. She was as close to perfect as she has ever been before.

There was Heymans Thursday at the National Aquatic Centre, with one dive to go, having silenced the loud Chinese crowd. “I didn't know,” Heymans said afterwards, trying to explain her emotions.

She didn't know she had the lead until the 60th dive of a 60 dive competition.

“They were announcing all the scores in Chinese.” Maybe it was best, considering the past, considering that Heymans has always been known as a flawed artist, that she didn't know.

Heymans hit her fifth dive beautifully - finishing as she had in each of her previous four dives, first in the competition. And on the last dive of the night here, Ruolin Chen became the seventh Chinese diver to win gold in the seven diving events her.

Heymans won just about the most precious silver medal Thursday, the 14th medal for Canada (Eric Lamaze would later make it 15) her third Olympic medal in three Olympic Games - but her first individual one. The Montreal diver now joins a list of only four other Canadians who have won medals in three previous Games.

“I've been through a really rough time in my life (to get here) and it made me the person that I am today and made me dive like this,” said Heymans, nervous before the competition, nervous after the competition, and appearing tense on the podium when it was time to exhale and enjoy.

“I was speechless,” said Li. “I'm so proud of her. This is so unbelievable.”

And so unlikely.

“She won the best battle of her Olympics,” said Annie Pelletier, the diving commentator who won a medal herself in 1996. “Not against the Chinese. But against her own self.”

The Chinese? That was another mountain to climb: She beat one, almost beat two.

“She not only won the silver medal but she challenged the whole country,” said Canadian chef de mission, Sylvie Bernier.” My god, we're thinking is this going to happen in China.? A win in China is as tough as it gets.”

As tough as starting your diving life all over again.

“I know she went through a lot of soul searching after (Athens). I know how much work that was,” said Mitch Geller, the diving team leader.

“But today, she put it all together. And then to not miss. She did everything, I mean everything. And I don't care what the results say, she is the most spectacular female diver in the world. We've seen it all from her.”

“And still, she's an enigma to me.”

Heymans, 26, may always be that but she is now an historical figure. Her name goes alongside Caroline Brunet, Lesley Thompson-Willie, Phil Edwards and Karen Cockburn as the only Canadians to win three Summer medals in three consecutive Games. She hoped to come to these Olympics competing in two events - the 10 metre platform event and the synchronized diving event but was crushed when she failed to make the Olympic team in the synchro event during trials.

“We blew the trials,” she said. “I could have come home with two medals instead of one.”

But the one medal was golden, even if the colour didn't match. The performance was. Heymans knew coming in to China she would need at least 400 points to get on the podium and she delivered magnificently. Her score of 437.05 was a career high.

The tiny Chen won with a score of 447.70.

But it wasn't until after the medal ceremony, after the hugs and congratulations kept going, that an upright and uptight that Heymans began to relax, to flash that wide smile wide smile and begin to enjoy her greatest night of a diving lifetime.

“You train your entire life for this,” said Heymans, who worked with noted sports psychologist Penny Werthner to get over Athens. “I wasn't thinking about what happened in Athens. I just wanted to finish the competition with an awesome dive.”

“I think I've grown a lot since Athens and a lot of things have changed and I'm just really happy that I nailed that last dive. I'm really happy.”