FUKUOKA, Japan, July 15 (Xinhua) — China secured all three diving gold medals at Saturday’s World Aquatics Championships, delivering a potent sign to rivals of their readiness for one more clear sweep.
The Chinese powerhouse’s preliminary victory was courtesy of two youngsters. Fourteen-year-old Wang Feilong, in live performance with 19-year-old Olympic champion Zhang Jiaqi, clinched the blended synchronized 10m platform.
Zhang, a girls’s synchronized platform victor on the Tokyo Olympics, impressed her youthful teammate Wang Feilong to guide from the beginning of their triumphant efficiency. The pair accrued a complete of 339.54 factors over six dives, outpacing Mexico’s Jose Balleza Isaias and Vivana Delangel Peniche who garnered 313.44 factors.
China’s second gold was claimed by Lin Shan, who outperformed her compatriot and reigning champion Li Yajie within the girls’s one-meter springboard.
An electrifying males’s synchronized three-meter springboard ultimate unfolded subsequent. Britain’s Jack Laugher and Anthony Harding, silver medalists on the earlier yr’s world championships, exploited a misstep by China’s Long Daoyi within the fifth dive to slim their deficit to lower than 9 factors.
However, a stellar efficiency within the ultimate dive by reigning Olympic champion Wang Zongyuan and Long fetched them 100.32 factors, culminating in an insurmountable whole of 456.33.
Laugher and Harding needed to accept silver as soon as extra, with a rating of 424.62 factors.
Long, who shaped a diving partnership with Wang Zongyuan simply six months prior, admitted to feeling immense strain.
“This is my first major international competition,” Long stated. “I was very nervous.”
Wang Zongyuan’s well timed recommendation, nonetheless, helped him regain his composure earlier than the decisive dive. “I told him to be confident in himself. We should never give up.”
The match’s first gold medal was awarded to Germany’s Leonie Beck within the girls’s 10-kilometer open water occasion.
The 26-year-old, a silver medalist eventually yr’s Budapest worlds, outpaced Australia’s Chelsea Gubecka within the ultimate stretch, clocking in first at two hours, two minutes and 34 seconds.
Gubecka, competing in her sixth world championships, secured silver with a time of two:02:38.1, whereas American swimmer Katie Grimes claimed the bronze, ending in 2:02:42.3.
Japan’s Yukiko Inui, a creative swimmer, earned the host nation their inaugural gold after efficiently defending her girls’s solo technical occasion title.