Wu Minxia Earns Fifth Diving Gold, Most Ever

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Photo Courtesy: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

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By Erin Keaveny, Swimming World College Intern

The Women’s synchronized 3m event concluded with China’s Wu Minxia and Shi Tingmao winning gold by a comfortable 32 points. They were followed by Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallapé of Italy taking the silver, and Maddison Keeney and Annabelle Smith of Australia bringing home the bronze.

This title will be Wu’s fifth Olympic gold, more golds then any other diver has won. She shared the previous record of four golds with five others; Fu Minxia (CHN), Chen Roulin (CHN), Guo Jingjing (CHN), Pat McCormick (USA), and Greg Louganis (USA). Wu also now holds the most gold medals in a single diving event.

Wu’s record breaking performance also ties her with Emilie Heymans (CAN), as the one of the only two women to have won diving medals in four separate Olympics. In addition, Wu is now the oldest woman to win a diving Olympic medal. The previous record holder was Micki King (USA), who won in 1972 when she was 28 years old.

Besides the gold medals, Wu also took the lead for most diving medals held by a woman. She was tied with Guo at six, but this new shiny gold brings her to a grand total of seven Olympic medals so far.

In an interview before competing, Wu commented in the South China Morning Post that she was “looking forward to perfection on [her] competition day.” With all those medals, Wu has made it as close to perfection as humanly possible.

China is now one step closer to their goal of sweeping all eight events, something that has never been done. Dining will resume tomorrow when the men take to the pool.

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