Half a lifetime since she was an Olympic teenage sensation, Melissa Wu has plunged into the record books again by diving for Australia in a record fifth Games in Paris.

The tiny 32-year-old Sydneysider with the big heart, still forging on through injury setbacks and on a dialled-back training load, celebrated her landmark moment at the Olympic Aquatics Centre by qualifying for the semi-finals of the 10m platform.

Even just reaching the final this time would be a remarkable achievement for Wu, the bronze medallist from Tokyo three years ago, who goes in the semi-finals later on Monday.

There, she’ll be joined by Sydney’s Ellie Cole, a 17-year-old debutant who’s not the only young diver in Australia to cite Wu as her diving hero.

Indeed, Cole, who just got pipped by Wu for the national title, actually out-qualified her idol in the 29-diver preliminary round, finishing ninth of the 18 qualifiers with her five-dive programme scoring 290.00 points, while Wu was 13th on 285.20.

It was 16 years ago at the Beijing Games that Wu, at 16 years 101 days, became the youngest Aussie diver to win an Olympic medal and just three years ago, in her fourth Games, she took her first individual medal.

But it’s become a harder slog for the 1.52m-tall Wu ever since suffering a back injury during filming for reality TV show SAS Australia soon after the Tokyo Games.

It kicked off a chain reaction of other problems, including bulging discs in her neck and knee trouble, which hampered her at this year’s world championships.