MADRID, Spain – Canadian diving veteran Alexandre Despatie has suffered a large cut to his head in a diving mishap in Spain, making his status for the London Olympics uncertain.

Mitch Geller of Diving Canada said the 27-year-old from Laval, Que., was hurt while performing an inward three-and-a-half and struck the board with full force.

Geller said Despatie lost his balance and his head hit the end of the springboard, suffering a 10-centimetre cut just below the hairline.

Despatie was pulled from the water by lifeguards and his coach, Arturo Miranda, but Geller said if the diver lost consciousness, it was just for a few moments.

Despatie required surgery to close the wound, which will take about two weeks to heal.

“Thanks so much for the support everyone!! The surgery went well and I will give you guys an update soon!!” Despatie said in a tweet, Wednesday morning. The hashtag to the tweet was “olympicdreamstillalive.”

Geller said there’s training Despatie can do on land before he gets back in the water to prepare for the London Games. He said about 60 per cent of a diver’s training is done outside of the water.

“Certainly the plan that we had in terms of his home stretch preparation for the Games themselves is no longer an option for us,” Geller said. “We really have to assess how we revise the plan.”

“He’s a special athlete and he probably has the best chance of anybody in these kinds of circumstances of making sure he’s ready to go.”

Despatie, who has won two silver medals in previous Olympics, will not compete in the Madrid Grand Prix this weekend, nor an event in Italy next week.

Despatie, a three-time world champion, won the silver medal in the three-metre springboard event at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 after earning a silver in the same event in Athens in 2004.

The Athens medal was the first in diving for a Canadian man.

Despatie also performed at the Sydney Games in 2000 when he was just 15.