Osmar Olvera Ibarra Medals at Second Straight Worlds in 1-Meter

Shixin Li of Australia; Photo Courtesy: Andrea Masini / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto

Osmar Olvera Ibarra Medals at Second Straight Worlds in 1-Meter

Osmar Olvera Ibarra won gold in the men’s 1-meter springboard Saturday at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, building on a stellar last year for the Mexican international.

Olvera Ibarra scored 431.75 to win the event, which is not part of the Olympic program but is contested at Worlds.

The other gold medal on the day went to China, which won the mixed synchronized platform via Huang Jianjie and Zhang Jiaqi.

Olvera, 19, is just the second Worlds gold medalist ever from Mexico, joining Paolo Espinosa in 2009. He adds his gold to silver medals on 1-meter and 3-meter at the Fukuoka Worlds last summer, and he also won three gold medals at the Pan Am Games in the fall.

Olvera’s win was authoritative. He led after 11 of the 12 rounds in prelims and finals. He finished first and finals, with just one rough dive. In the final, he delivered the highest-scoring dive of the first and second rounds of the final, then the fifth and sixth to seal the win by 36.05 points over Shixin Li of Australia. Li, who won team bronze on Friday, was second from the second round on. Great Britain’s Ross Haslam jumped into third place by tying Li for the best dive of the third round and held that position, 4.35 points ahead of Italian Giovanni Tocci.

Li’s countryman Kurtis Mathews was sixth. Lyle Yost was the top American in ninth.

Mexico added another medal in synchro, with Kevin Berlin and Alejandra Estudillo taking bronze in the team competition.

But China reasserted its dominance. Huang and Zhang had the highest-scoring dive of each of the first four rounds and were wire-to-wire winners in 353.82. South Korea’s Jin Mi Jo and Young Myong Im were second all the way in 303.96.

Berlin and Estudillo jumped from fourth to the medal on their final dive. They had the third-best dive of the final round, scoring 74.52 points on a 5255B. That allowed them to score 296.13 points, leap-frogging the German duo of Tom Laszlo Waldsteiner and Elena Wassen. The Germans, who tied for the fourth best dive of the final round, slid to fifth. In between was the American duo of Tyler Wills and Bayleigh Cranford, who scored a round-best 78.54 points on their fifth to score 291.90 and get to fourth by .48 points.

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