China’s Cao leads 3-meter springboard preliminaries

China’s Yuan Cao today led the men’s 3meter springboard preliminaries in which Mexico’s Rommel Pacheco, World Cup champion, came in the second place.

Cao, 21, totaled 498.70 points after receiving top marks with a program of high difficulty.

Pacheco started well with an inward 3.5 somersault that had dive difficulty of 3.4 but then made mistakes in his next two appearances, finishing in second spot with 488.25 points.

American Kristian Ipsen (461.35), Russian Evgenii Kuznetsov (449.90) and Colombian Sebastian Morales (447.05) rounded out the group of the top five.

The 3meter springboard semifinal is scheduled to take place tomorrow in the morning and the final in the afternoon.