Pleased, yet disappointed and frustrated.

This was the emotional roller-coaster that faced diver Yona Knight-Wisdom.

He entered the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in Australia excited about an unexpected surprise, but that surprise came in the form of a fourth place finish in the one-metre dive final.

After achieving 368.15 points from the preliminary round, Knight-Wisdom made significant improvements in the final scoring 388.65 points, which was just off his personal best of 392 points.

However, it was not enough to get him on the podium as he finished behind Leeds City club mate Jack Laugher (438.00), Australia’s James Connor (412.45) and James Heatly (399.25) of Scotland.

“This Commonwealth Games was the first time I came into an international competition genuinely aiming for a medal. Fourth would normally please me, but to come so close to my goal without achieving it was frustrating,” the England-born diver, whose mother is a Barbadian and father Jamaican, said shortly after the performance.

Wrestling with frustration over that performance, Knight-Wisdom may have gradually lost focus heading into the three-metre dive where he scored 365.85 in the preliminary, followed by 377.30 in the final.

That was good enough for 10th position, as he once again finished behind winner Laugher (519.40), with Phillipe Gagne (452.70) of Canada and Australia’s Connor (438.50) taking the other two podium spots.

After getting his emotional footing back, Knight-Wisdom, who flipped from grass-roots to prominence when he achieved the feat of being Jamaica’s first-ever male diver to compete at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, acknowledged his recent performances as a major improvement from those four years ago.

At the 2014 Glasgow, Scotland Games he finished fifth and 11th in the one-metre and three-metre springboard events, respectively.

“It’s funny you put pleased/disappointed because it was definitely a mixture of both emotions; I would’ve absolutely loved to be on the podium, but I realised I can’t be mad. I was only four points off my personal best and I improved on what I did last time round in 2014,” he told the Jamaica Observer from his base in Gold Coast.

“I have never placed that high in a prelim at a major event, so going into the final in the medals was challenging as I wanted to maintain that position. All of my dives could have been executed a lot better, however there were no major mistakes, which is always a positive and something I can build on going forward,” he added.

It was certainly nothing to be disgraced about for Knight-Wisdom, as he has been promising much following a string of groundbreaking performances for Jamaica and he continues to launch to higher heights in etching his name in the history books with each dive.

When competing at the FINA Diving World Cup in 2016, Knight-Wisdom not only became the first Jamaican male diver – as well as the first male diver from any Caribbean nation to qualify for the Olympic Games, but also claimed silver to earn the island’s first-ever World Champs diving medal.

The diver, who was named Leeds Beckett University Sportsman of the Year for 2016, stressed the significance of improvement going forward, as he remains committed to the task of keeping the country’s flag flying in the sport.

“I didn’t dive fantastically in the prelims of the three-metre and I was hoping to turn it up in the final, unfortunately it was not to be, but again it was better than my finish in 2014, which again is a major positive for me.

“The main lesson from these performances is that I can deal with pressure, and that I am really close to mixing it with the big players in the game. So with a little more and by extension the right support, there’s no reason why I can’t go further in this sport,” the 22-year-old noted.

“So with that said, the goal is always the same, Tokyo 2020. How I achieve it? Hard work, belief and professionalism, these are the keys. But whatever happens, I want to enjoy the journey as much as possible as I continue to raise Jamaica’s profile in diving,” he said.