Showing a highly competitive charge, divers fought hard against the prevailing winners, China, which resulted in a thrilling display in the men’s 10m individual platform finals.
In spite of a well fought competition, no one could break China’s stranglehold of the top spot, allowing them to sweep the board with a total of 10 gold medals.
The first event of the day saw China reaching the top spot in both groups of the women’s 3m individual springboard semi-finals but, by the afternoon, Jennifer Abel’s determination and drive to improve on her entries and finesse paid off as she earned a silver medal for Canada.
With a total score of 378.20 points, Abel improved on her earlier performance by a 21.25-point margin.
Shi Tingmao replicated her success of the morning competition, with 392.25 points earning her a gold medal and her fellow Chinese diver, Wang Han, claimed bronze with 374.40 points.
Perfect 10 gold for China at Dubai's #FINA / #NVC #DWS16! Medals in the last final, the mixed 3m synchro: 1. China; 2. Canada; 3. Russia
— FINA (@fina1908) March 19, 2016
Critical of her performance, Shi said: “I give my performance a seven out of 10 today. I feel I let myself down as I didn’t perform as well as in the training. My fourth dive was where I lapsed and, in fact, I didn’t perform so well in this dive in the training either. I think I need to give this more focus for improvement in the next competition.”
The morning event of the men’s 10m individual platform semi-final saw Russia’s Victor Minibaev pull off a spectacular win in the semifinals of his group, with an overall result advantage on both groups behind an impressive 528.60 points.
The afternoon event lent itself to a thrilling final, where round one saw a flurry of 10 points awarded to the last four consecutive divers, David Boudia, Chen Aisen, Yang Hao and Victor Minibaev.
In a well fought battle, China’s Yang Hao held onto his number one spot from the semi-final group stage, taking gold in the final with 569.30 points. A mere 0.15 points behind was Yang’s Chinese counterpart, Chen Aisen, who scored 569.15 points.
Yang said: “This is the first time I take part in the World Series individual 10m and I think my performance was good. The other divers were strong but this was my first time so I didn’t have the pressure. I just aim to perform at my training level.”
In the last event of the competition, the 3m springboard mixed synchro event saw China’s pairing, Wang Han and Yang Hao taking gold with 337.50 points, ahead of Canada’s Abel and Francois Imbeau-Dulac on 323.46 points.
The 2016 FINA/NVC Diving World Series now makes its way to Windsor, Canada before concluding with the last leg in Kazan, Russia on April 22-24.
