China blows out the candles and tops the podium on first day of Wuhan 2019 diving

WUHAN (CHN) - China began its gold rush in the diving competition at the Wuhan 2019 Military World Games by taking the top two places across all of the first day’s events.

Coming in as the firm favourites, Chinese divers went unrivalled in the men’s 1m springboard, women’s 10m platform and women’s 3m synchronised springboard as diving made its debut on the Games programme.

WANG Zongyuan (CHN) gave himself a memorable 18th birthday present in the men’s 1m springboard where he wrestled gold from team-mate MA Depeng (CHN).

“Happy birthday, and there is still a long way to go,” was WANG's message to himself on the special day.

His team-mate, meanwhile, only had self-criticism to offer after leading for four of the six rounds, but ending up with a silver.

“I don’t think I had a proper attitude toward this event; I cared so much about winning, which distracted me," MA said. 

WANG and MA were each more than 50 points ahead of their closest rival, Oleg KOLODIY (UKR) who finished the event with bronze to add to the silver medal he won in the same pool at the World Cup stage last year.

That disparity in the scores was also visible in the other events. In the 10m platform, gold medallist SI Yajie (CHN) and silver medallist LIN Shan (CHN) were both more than 70 points ahead of third place finisher KIM Mi Rae (PRK).

KIM Mi Rae and her team-mate KIM Mi Hwa (PRK), who finished fourth, tried to match the Chinese in difficulty but their execution never matched the clean perfection of the hosts.

Chinese pairs also took the top two spots in the 3m synchronised springboard, but since competition rules allow only one pair from each country to receive medals, WEI Ying and HUANG Xiaohui (CHN) shared the podium with Russia's Kristina ILINYKH and Iuliia TIMOSHININA and Germany's Jana Lisa ROTHER and Saskie OETTINGHAUS while their team-mates HU Jiahan and OUYANG Yu (CHN) received an honourable mention.

The Russian and German pairs kept interchanging in their placements throughout the rounds, with the Russians surpassing their rivals after the last dive by a mere 0.57 points.

(Xinhua Info)