China conquers fourteen medals in Rome

China conquers 14 medals in Rome

The Chinese pair of Liang Huo and Ye Lin has won the last diving final of the 13th FINA World Championships by capturing the Synchro 10m Platform. This medal gives Team China an overall victory in Rome with 7 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze medals after the completion of the programme.

David Boudia and Thomas Fincham of the USA finished in second place 25.74 points behind China. Jose Antonio Guerra Oliva and Jeinkler Ernesto Aguirre Manso scored 456.60 – just 0.24 less than silver medallists. Liang Huo and Ye Lin were the strong favourites in this discipline. The pair won at the previous World Championships in Melbourne as well as at the Beijing Olympics. According to the final results, one could say that there was little intrigue involved, but in fact there was. In the 5th round, the Chinese team made a technical mistake. Both divers missed the entry of one of the most difficult dives – the 207 B (3.5 somersaults Back Pike) but they were lucky to do this mistake very similarly – without breaking their synchronisation. This is why China’s general score didn’t suffer. The point difference between China and Cuba decreased to 11.16, but that was not enough to shake China’s confidence.

Diving can be quite unpredictable, but the superiority of the favourites in this event was evident even in the first two “optional” rounds. These two dives were not complicated, so no team acquired any advantage regarding difficulty in this part of the competition. Results of the leaders are generally equal at this stage of the competition and this is the main reason why the real fight starts usually in the third round.

Liang Huo and Ye Lin however, moved ahead by almost 9 points in these two rounds. They got nine “tens”, which was quite a good way to show that the team is more technically perfect than any other pair in the competition.

The audience waited for a new surprise from the youngest finalist Tom Daley, who became world champion in individual platform final only days ago, but the British partnership didn’t look great in this event: two of their attempts (407 C and 307 C) were spoiled terribly and the team ended its performance in 9th position.

Jose Antonio Guerra Oliva and Jeinkler Ernesto Aguirre Manso had never been among the medallists before. Guerra Oliva surprised the audience in 2005 – he got silver on the 10m platform in Montreal and finished less than 7 points behind the World Champion – Jia Hu. It is not easy to find a partner for such a remarkable diver, but not impossible: here in Rome the Cuban team made that clear to everybody.

 

 

The last round was unbelievably competitive. The score of the previous rounds were so close that each of the three pairs – USA, Cuba and Germany could have become silver medallists. Together with China they were going to execute the same twist diving combination with maximum degree of difficulty – 3.8. Liang Huo and Ye Lin set a record score with 107.16, Patrick Hausding and Sasha Klein got the second highest points – 102.60 but the Germans had a lack of good luck in this final: they ended up one step from the podium.

The last round also changed the leaders’ positions. Cuba (92.34 for the dive) dropped from the second to the third position; USA (98.04) thus got silver in this event, and in team standing too, with four medals overall.

The Russian team, which won this discipline at the 2005 World Championships in Montreal, and got silver in 2007 in Melbourne, was also one of the favourites this time around. However, the experienced Gleb Galperin and Dmitry Dobroskok were injured and missed the competition. The substitute team (Ilya Minibaev and Ilya Zakharov) failed to compete on such a high level.