China shines in 10-meter synchronized diving

China’s Aisen Chen and Yue Lin made six almost perfect synchronized and very difficult dives to win the gold medal in the 10meter platform event at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games on Monday.

The duo scored a total of 496.98 points, handily beating Americans David Boudia and Steele Johnson with 457.11 points and Britons Thomas Daley and Daniel Goodfellow with 444.45 in a competition in which Mexicans Ivan Garcia and German Sanchez came in fifth.

It was a finals competition in which the fight for the medals proceeded along two tracks, given that the Chinese pair who were the 2015 world champions in the event were assured of garnering the gold right from the starting round and it was left to the Americans, Britons, Germans and Mexicans to battle it out for the silver and bronze.

In the first round, the favorites cleaning executed a forward dive rated at 2.0 for difficulty and took a decisive lead, and with the third round the complexity of their dives began to increase and they were uncatchable.

The BoudiaJohnson team demonstrated their consistency after the obligatory dives and in the fourth round they executed a threeandahalf turn dive for which they received 85.68 points and assured themselves of the silver.

The Mexicans were in third place, tied with the Britons, at the end of the first round but in the second round they slipped out of the medal race, although Daley and Goodfellow managed to stage a comeback and snatch the bronze away from the German team.

The Olympic diving events will continue on Tuesday with the women’s synchronized platform diving finals.