SWIMMING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS : 12-Year-Old Wins Diving Championship

Fu Mingxia, a 12-year-old from China, became the youngest world champion in the history of any aquatic event when she rallied to win the women’s platform diving Friday at the World Swimming Championships.

No sooner had she accepted her gold medal, than FINA, the sport’s governing body, announced it was limiting future world championships, Olympics and World Cup events to those 14 and over.

A loophole in the new rule will allow her compete as a 13-year-old at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

Elena Miroshana of the Soviet Union won the silver and Wendy L. Williams of the United States the bronze. Xu Yanmei of China fell to fourth after leading with three dives to go.

Edwin Jongejans of the Netherlands, who finished eighth in the three-meter event at the 1988 Olympics, topped Friday’s preliminaries in the men’s one-meter event, with Chinese divers Wang Yijie second and Tan Liangde third.

Mark Lenzi of the United States was fourth despite tendinitis of the left ankle that hurt every time he bounced on the board. Mark Bradshaw, the U.S. diver of the year, was sixth in the field of 34.

Fu was behind Xu after the preliminaries. Fu stayed second until the sixth round, when contrasting outcomes on the same dive turned the contest around.

Fu was competing in only her third major international competition. She won the title at last summer’s Goodwill Games.