China sweeps three golds at FINA Diving World Cup

Xinhua

China collected three golds and one sliver on Friday at FINA Diving World Cup as teen stars Quan Hongchan and Chen Yuxi clinched their first World Cup gold.

Only two pairs competed in the women's 10m synchro platform final. Tokyo Olympic champion Quan, joined by world champion Chen, delivered five rounds of diving with a total score of 349.80 points to claim the gold, the first title in the tournament for the two young talents.

The only challengers Nike Agunbiade/Katrina Young from the United States finished second with 261.54. Both duos performed the same dives but the American pair never earned more than 7.5 points from any judge while China routinely tallied 8.5 and 9.0.

Despite the victory, Chen said, "What's the most on our minds is that we could do better. We had some mistakes in our first four dives. We still have the space for executing some better performances."

All four athletes will return for the individual 10m on Saturday, but only Young will compete in a third event in Berlin, the mixed team final on Sunday.

Four pairs competed in the men's 10m synchro platform final. Reigning world champions Yang Hao and Lian Junjie from China led after every round to take the gold.

Yang and Lian amassed 444.84 points, nearly 100 points ahead of the runners-up duo Lou Massenberg and Timo Barthel from host Germany. Colombian pair Alejandro Solarte and Sebastian Villa Castaneda won the bronze.

"The degree of difficulty of our dives in the third and fifth rounds isn't too high; it's a little bit too easy for us. But this makes it easier for us to achieve high execution scores in the early round dives," said Lian.

The men's 3m springboard final became a battle between Olympic champion Cao Yuan and world champion Wang Zongyuan.

Remarkably, five of Wang's six dives topped the 90-point mark and the 5156B with a dive difficulty of 3.9 in the third round scored 99.45. Wang finished 562.20 points for the gold. Cao took silver, 48.35 points behind his teammate.

"I'm not too satisfied, especially with my dives in the last two rounds," said Cao, the 2016 Olympic gold medalist of the event. "My dives are normal, not perfect, but not bad either."

The Diving World Cup in Berlin will continue on Saturday with three finals: the women's 3m synchro, the men's 3m synchro and the women's individual 10m.