GWANGJU, South Korea, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese divers swept the first three gold medals on offer at the FINA World Championships as Lian Junjie/Si Yajie and Chen Yiwen took easy victories while Cao Yuan/Xie Siyi struggled to be crowned until the last dive here on Saturday.
Among the three events, only the men's 3m springboard synchro was an Olympic event so far at the World Championships and evolved into the only hard battle in which three pairs took the lead in turns.
Cao/Xie, the silver medalists two years ago in Budapest and winners in Kazan, had a roller-coaster final as they started high in the first round but down to 7th place in the rather easy dive 301B with 45 points.
The Chinese pair came from behind slowly from 4th, second and number one after the fifth round. In the last dive 109C, Cao/Xie performed steady to score 90.06 for a winning total of 439.74.
"We're happy to become the synchro champions after four years as Russian divers Ilia Zakharov/Evgenii Kuznetsov edged us last time in the Budapest worlds. We were too eager to win and made some mistakes in the second and third dive. Then my coach told me to calm down and to focus on the technical details. It helped us a lot to cool down and to win the event," said Cao, who will also compete in the men's 3m springboard and 10m platform synchro.
Jack Luagher/Daniel Goodfellow of Britain once dominated the field, dropped to the thrid after the fourth round, and finished the runners-up with 415.02.
Yahel Castillo Huerta/Juan Manuel Celaya Hernandez came to third 413.94 winning the second bronze medal for team Mexico.
"The biggest thing was to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games. We did not expect to win the medal at all and we were happy about that," Huerta said.
