SOUTHEND Diving’s Oliver Dingley has made it through to the Commonwealth Games three metre springboard final.

But his hopes of a medal have been hit by a rib injury.

Dingley qualified in eighth place for this evening’s showdown after a poor last dive.

And he feels his fitness problems could prevent him working his way on to the podium.

“I’m a bit injured at the moment,” said Dingley.

“I have a problem in my ribs area and I’m finding it very hard to breathe.

“The most difficult dive I was planning to do I’ve had to take out.

“If I do miss out on a medal then it will probably be because I’m not able to do that dive.”

Dingley suffered the injury during training and was forced to have a pain-killing injection yesterday.

“It’s just general wear and tear but something just went,” revealed Dingley.

“I had an injection yesterday in a very uncomfortable position and I’m finding it quite hard to sit down at the moment.

“It’s made diving a bit tougher but hopefully it will be wear off a bit before tonight.”

Dingley began the preliminary round in steady fashion and was in either third or fourth for most of the competition.

However, a poor last dive saw him slip down to eighth and Dingley is keen to correct that this evening.

“I got a really good take off but thought I was higher than I was and just came out of the dive a tad too early,” said Dingley.

“Hopefully I can do better tonight because before then I had consistently been in the diving positions.

“All of my other dives were steady enough, apart from the last one.

“So if I can improve that and keep the others the same then hopefully a medal will be on the cards for me.”