MOULTRIE – Colquitt County’s Carson Tyler blew past the competition to win the platform event at the Olympic Team Trials on Saturday and will represent the U.S. at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Tyler is the first Colquitt County-Moss Farms Diving athlete to qualify for the Olympics.

And he did it in style.

Tyler, who dives collegiately at Indiana University, headed into the Saturday’s finals with a 47.30-point lead over Purdue’s Tyler Wills.

His final score of 965.45 was 73.15 points better than the 892.30 recorded by Brandon Loschiavo, also of Purdue, who finished second.

As the runner-up, Loschiavo also could earn a berth on the U.S. team at the Olympics, which will begin July 26.

Tyler will try to become just the third diver since 1976 to qualify for the Olympics in both events events when he competes in the springboard finals at the Allan Jones Aquatic Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Tyler heads into the springboard final in second place, 21.65 points behind his Indiana University training partner Andrew Capobianco. Tyler won the NCAA 3-meter championship this year.

Only Greg Louganis did it in 1976, 1984 and 1988, and Mark Ruiz who did it in 2000, have qualified for the Olympics in both events.

The springboard final will be televised on NBC.

Tyler is a two-time NCAA 10-meter champion and had finished first in both the prelim and semifinal rounds in Knoxville.

He earned at least 70 points on all six of his dives on Saturday.

His highest scoring dive came in the fifth round when a back 3 1/2 somersault netted him a 90.75.

Three judges gave him scores of 9.5 on the dive.

“I’m still letting it sink in,” he told NBC following the competition. “I can’t believe it. I’m just blown away.

“That was an amazing competition. I couldn’t be more happy with the way it went.”

Tyler, a 2021 Colquitt County High graduate who turned 20 on June 9, grew up in the Moss Farms program and among those who have coached him are John Fox, who left the program for Auburn University last year.

“I couldn’t be more proud of him and for him,” said Fox, who was at Moss Farms for eight years before taking his first college job.

Camille Akridge Bowden, now a judge who officiated in the Olympic Team Trials, but did not judge the events Tyler competed in, also coached him at Moss Farms and was herself a Diving Tiger.

“I’m having to hold back tears,” she said in a text from Knoxville. “I knew he would be here and he had it in him since day one.

“I am so proud of this kid.”