16th FINA World Championships

July 24 - August 9, 2015

WU MINXIA AND OF CHINA GRAB GOLD IN WOMEN’S SYNCHRO 3M SPRINGBOARD

25.07.2015, 20:10 Today the Aquatics Palace hosted the women’s synchronised 3m springboard final SPORT where four-time Olympic champion and double world champion Shi Tingmao won their second straight world title with 351.30 points.

At the previous World Championships in Barcelona, the Chinese duet Wu Minxia and Shi Tingmao finished way ahead of their opponents edging out the Italian favourite (ITA) with 30 points and leaving Canadian athlete, Jennifer Abel, far behind. By the way, together with Pamela Ware, the latter finished second at the leg of the FINA World Series in Kazan, being beaten again by the same Chinese duet but pushing Russia’s Nadezhda Bazhina and Kristina Ilinykh into the bronze-medal place.

Before the event, Tania Cagnotto of Italy considered athletes from China, Australia, Canada and Russia to be her main opponents. Another serious challenge was expected to come from US diver Abigail Johnston, the 2012 Olympic silver medallist. All in all, it looked like a promising event.

The very first dive was pretty much decisive; after scoring 55.20 the Chinese athletes took the lead at once. Meanwhile, the Australian and Italian divers were hard on their heels. The Malaysian athletes eventually placed 12th. In the third dive, the Italian divers faced some problems with synchronicity, which was pretty risky at the moment as by that time they were only one point ahead of the Canadian duet. As for the Australian representatives, they were quite determined in getting silver. After three dives the Chinese and Australian divers reinforced their positions in the medal standings whereas the Canadian athletes and the host duet moved up to the third and fourth positions respectively. After the fourth dive the first three leaders were as follows: China, Canada and Russia. However, by the end of the event the Australian duet managed to summon up and finally take bronze. As for the Russian duet, they placed sixth, finishing after Ukraine (4th place) and Italy (5th place).

FINA Worlds 2015. Diving.

Women. Synchronised 3m springboard.

1. Wu MINXIA/ Shi TINGMAO (CHN) – 351.30 2. Jennifer ABEL/ Pamela WARE (CAN) – 319.47 3. Samantha MILLS / Esther QIN (AUS) – 304.20

Aquatics Palace. July 25

Press Office for Organising Committee of 16th FINA World Championships

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