Chinese Olympic champions Qin Kai and Wang Feng led from start to finish to retain their men’s 3-meter synchronised springboard title at the World Championships in Rome yesterday.

Americans Troy Dumais and Kristian Ipsen finished second with Alexandre Despatie and Reuben Ross of Canada completing the podium.

It was Qin’s second gold medal of these championships having won the 1-meter springboard Friday while for Wang it represented a third straight world crown in this event.

The Chinese posted the best score in five out of six rounds and clinched the title with a 94.50 score from their final dive to give them a total of 467.94.
“This morning we were feeling a bit nervous so we didn’t perform our best,” said Wang.

“In the preliminaries we didn’t do our best because the competition was pretty easy,” added Qin. “Tonight it was more difficult to get through so we had to perform better. This gave us a boost.”

Dumais and Ipsen were in a battle with Yuriy Kunakov and Dmitry Sautin for second until the Russian pair produced the worst dive of the fifth round to drop out of contention.

Despatie and Ross came into the final round in fifth place but did just enough to deny hosts Italy a medal by finishing a mere 0.09 points above Nicola and Tommaso Marconi in a tight finish for the bronze.

Dumais and Ipsen had headed the field in the morning preliminaries after Qin and Wang flunked their final dive to drop from first to fourth.

Having won nine out of 10 in Melbourne two years ago, China’s aim of a clean sweep of gold medals in the diving competition this year suffered a setback yesterday.

In the women’s 10-meter platform event, Paola Espinosa caused a sensational upset in beating China’s Olympic champion Chen Ruolin to claim Mexico’s first ever World Championship diving gold medal.

The 22-year-old had never before won an individual medal at this level but produced a series of near perfect dives to stun the Chinese and make history for her country. Chen took second place with compatriot Kang Li taking third.

In the women’s 1-meter springboard event, Veteran Julia Pakhalina led from start to finish to earn gold.Chinese duo Wu Minxia and Wang Han finished second and third.

It was the Russian’s third world title and came 11 years after winning a 3-meter springboard and 3-meter synchronised springboard in 1998.

Agencies