CHINA’S Olympic champions Lin Yue and Huo Liang retained their men’s synchronized 10-meter platform title in Rome, Italy, on Saturday to earn the nation the seventh diving gold at the World Championships.
Lin and Huo took command from the start with crisp, elegant dives and won comfortably with 482.58 points despite a relatively weak fifth-round effort.
David Boudia and Thomas Finchum of the United States produced an outstanding final dive to snatch the silver medal with a score of 456.84, just 0.24 more than Cuban duo Jose Guerra and Jeinkler Ernesto Aguirre Manso.
Saturday’s victory means the Chinese team has re-established its dominance at the end of the diving at the World Championships after a wobbly start in which they let three of the 10 world titles get away.
China only missed out on one of the eight golds up for grabs at the Beijing Olympics last year.
On Friday, Olympic champions Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia won the women’s 3-meter synchronized springboard event.
For Guo, it was the fifth time in a row she has won a 3-meter springboard and 3-meter synchronized double at the worlds.
Italians Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallape finished second with Russians Julia Pakhalina and Anastasia Pozdniakova pipping Jennifer Abel and Melanie Rinaldi of Canada for bronze.
The result was never in any doubt as Guo and Wu led from start to finish, as they had also done in the preliminaries.
Guo is the most successful diver of all time having won 10 world championship gold medals and four Olympic crowns.
She and Wu are double Olympic champions and have won four world titles as a pairing as well.
Guo has five synchronized crowns, though, as she teamed up with Li Ting in 2005. She won two titles with Wu before that and now two since as well.
Despite constant speculation surrounding her future, 27-year-old Guo insists she is not about to retire.
“We had a great performance. We get on very well, if we have the chance we will keep diving together,” she said.
“The longer you work together, the more you improve as a couple. I never said I was going to retire after the Olympics. I just wanted to take a break and to rest for a little while.”
(SD-Agencies)