BEIJING — The third time was, well, like the other two.

Troy Dumais was fine with that, because of the way he reached that result.

The 28-year-old from Ventura finished sixth in the men's 3-meter springboard competition Tuesday night at the Water Cube, matching his finishes in both the Sydney and Athens Olympics.

He Chong of China won the competition with 572.90 points, 36.25 ahead of Alexandre Despatie of Canada. Qin Kai of China was third with 530.10 points.

Dumais finished with 472.50 points. The other U.S. finalist, Chris Colwill, finished 12th with 425.90 points.

"Tired of sixth? That's not the quote," said Dumais, a Buena High graduate. "The quote should be more like I went after everything and I didn't hold anything back, and the placement doesn't matter as long as you have fun.

"It wasn't the result I wanted, but I wasn't going to hold anything back. I wasn't tentative, and again, my fifth round — that's the only thing that bothers me in terms of my performance at all."

Through three dives, Dumais was in the thick of the medal picture, in fifth place but just 3.80 points behind Qin, in third.

But his medal hopes faded when he scored just 57.75 points on his reverse 312 somersault — the second lowest score of the night for any diver — and slipped to eighth, almost 50 points out of third.

"The whole idea was you've got to stay in the mix to be in the mix, and I was in the mix. If I hit my fifth-round dive, I would have been what, 15 points out of a medal. I only got 50-some points on it, and normally I can get 90 to 100 points. So it's 40 points difference, right in fourth place, and then it sets you up for the next round.

"I did all I could, and I didn't hold anything back, and I have to hold my head high for that."

Dumais said the reverse 312 was a dive he'd been hitting consistently in practice.

"What's so funny is the only ones I missed were in the meet, and they were all over. And I didn't make the correction for that.

"I was so trying to make a correction just on that part, that I was looking for it, looking for it, looking for it. Which is not a problem, but sometimes corrections and ideas and thoughts overwhelm the processes of movements. I know I can hit that dive."

Colwill, who had finished with solid dives in the final two rounds of the semifinals to climb to sixth, never found his groove in the finals, never climbing higher than 11th in the standings.

"I'm definitely proud of how I handled myself getting to the finals," said the 23-year-old from Brandon, Fla. "I just didn't quite follow through."

Dumais, who also has a fourth and a sixth in Olympic synchronized diving on his résumé, remained generally upbeat about the night — "I enjoyed every moment of this that was one of my goals" — and his future.

"You've just got to go back and start trucking and just keep this again in the bottom of your heart and the back of your mind to keep pushing.

"I trained really, really efficiently and hard these last four years, and they paid off with huge dividends. I've been more successful in the past four years than I ever had (the 25-time national champion won bronze and silver and both the 2005 World Championships and 2006 World Cup) and we'll see what happens with the next four."

If he wouldn't quite make a definitive declaration that he would continue to dive, he certainly sounded as if that was the likelihood.

"You don't get these years back," he said. "I can always sit behind a table or a desk working when I'm a lot older. But when you love something so much and you enjoy doing it and the fire's still there, continue doing it, because you're never going to get it back."