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The second day of diving in Budapest saw the first medals awarded. Final events took place in mixed ten meter synchro, women’s one meter and men’s synchronized three meter.
Chinese power team Ren Qian and Lian Junjie took gold in mixed platform by an impressive thirty points. This win is just one more in a winning streak for the young team. It follows their golds in Windsor, Kazan, Guangzhou and Beijing, all part of the FINA Diving World Series.
Further, Ren is coming off of an individual gold at the Rio Olympics on 10m, where she became the youngest champion ever at 15 years old. She will be in action again individually on the 18th with preliminaries for women’s ten-meter.
British duo Matthew Lee and Lois Toulson are headed home with a silver medal, while Rae Kim Mi and Myong Hyon Il from the People’s Republic of Korea finished in the bronze medal spot.
In another incredible performance, Maddison Keeney won women’s one meter. She not only matched her consistency in yesterday’s preliminaries, but outperformed her preliminary scores in four of her five dives.
Her win was not an easy one. Heading into the last round Keeney was trailing Nadezhda Bazhina of Russia by 0.95. Bazhina’s final dive was a forward two and a half pike (105B), for which she received 8s from the judges. With a degree of difficulty of 2.6, the dive earned her 62.4 points.
Keeney’s final dive was her most challenging, a full twisting two and a half pike (5152B) with a DD of 3.2. The dive is not only her hardest, but was the most difficult dive attempted in the competition. Yesterday in preliminaries she only earned 56 points on the dive, receiving 5s from the judges. A repeat of her preliminary performance would not have been good enough for gold.
The Australian diver nailed the dive, receiving 7.5s and 8s from the judges, totaling a massive 73.6 points. After a disappointing finish at worlds in 2015, Keeney has proven herself as a force to be reckoned with on the international stage. She will compete again on three meter next week.
Bazhina will bring the silver home to Russia, while Elena Bertocchi of Italy took Bronze. In a surprising turn, the Chinese women were shut out.
Both the preliminary and final events for men’s synchronized three meter took place today.
In the preliminary event, Russian men Ilia Zakharov and Evgenii Kuznetsov trailed the favorites, Xie Siyi and Cao Yuan of China, by less than two points. American men Mike Hixon and Sam Dorman were standing in third, followed by the teams from Canada, Britain and Ukraine.
The final event, like women’s one meter, came down to the last dive. The Chinese team was standing in the gold medal spot for the entire competition. For their final dive they competed a forward four and a half (109C), the hardest front spinner in diving, with an massive DD of 3.8. They completed the dive for 8s across the board, earning them 88.92 points.
The Russian duo had bounced around in the rankings, at one point tied for fifth. By the final round they were in second place. Their last dive? A 109C.
Zakharov and Kuznetsov performed an unforgettable dive.
The Russian’s final dive received 9.0s, 9.5s, and even a perfect 10 from one judge. Their dive scored 100.32 points, by far the highest score on an individual dive on the meet so far. In the last round, the team that had trailed for the entire meet took the gold medal spot by 6.9 points.
Xie and Cao from China are headed home with an unexpected silver, while Oleg Kolodiy and Illya Kvasha from Ukraine stepped up to earn a bronze.
On the first day of finals, Budapest was not disappointing. Tune in for more excitement tomorrow with the men’s one meter final, and women’s synchronized ten meter.
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