China's Lin Yue and Huo Liang left no chances for any of the guest divers at the 16th FINA Diving World Cup by winning the men's 10m synchronized platform gold medal at the National Aquatics Center in Beijing on Friday.
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LinYue (right) and Huo Liang of China compete in the men's 10m synchronized platform final during the 16th FINA Diving World Cup tournament held at the National Aquatics Center on Friday in Beijing.?? |
Patrick Hausding and Sascha Klein from Germany finished second, while British pair Blake Aldridge and Thomas Daley ended in third place.
A small mistake in the fifth round didn't affect the Chinese duo's big advantage on the platform, with the event's reigning world champions winning the title with a score of 482.46.
"Our team work is very good and our synchronization was strong," said Huo. "On the fifth dive, which we didn't do well, we didn't enter the water very well. But, on the whole, we did well."
Despite their good performance in the competition, Lin and Huo have yet to find out whether they will be diving for China at the Olympics, as the team leader said the final entry list will not be decided until after June.
"We still have a series of competitions until June, so it's hard to decide the list early," said Zhou Jihong, team leader of China's diving team.
She also reiterated that there would be no change to the national team coaches ahead of the Games, which virtually rules out a comeback by Yu Fen, China's highly successful former coach, who expressed her desire last month to return to help the national team prepare for the Olympics.
"The coaching group of the national team is of a high standard and we cooperated very well during the work," Zhou said. "Our coaches have worked for a long time with the divers, so they are very familiar with them. We have no plan to make any adjustment."
China is now leading the medal tally after winning all five golds. The seven-day World Cup also serves as a test event for the Water Cube ahead of the Beijing Games and also as an Olympic qualifier.
The stable performances at the last two rounds lifted the German duo to second place with a total score of 466.74 points.
"Securing third place in the preliminaries and second place in the finals is a good result for us," said Klein, who has only been diving with Hausding for about a year.
At the women's 3m springboard preliminary earlier, China's Wu Minxia led her star teammate Guo Jingjing by five successful dives. World champion and Olympic gold medalist Guo ranked second after a big mistake in the third round, while Christina Loukas from the United States ranked third.
The women's 3m springboard final will be held on Saturday night.
(China Daily February 23, 2008)