Another gold in diving keeps clean sweep dream alive

As the undisputed favorite in all diving events, China is once again reigning supreme at the Olympic Games with two gold medals already secured in Paris, leaving the rest of the world impressed by its focus, consistency and collective strength.

Chinese men's pair Yang Hao and Lian Junjie held their nerve and executed six perfect dives, despite mounting pressure from formidable rivals, to win the synchronized 10-meter platform final on Monday, keeping Team China's hopes of an eight-medal clean sweep in diving alive.

Leading from the first round, Yang and Lian kept their dives complete and clean to score a total of 490.35 points and win their first Olympic title in the synchronized event, after having collected three world championship trophies together.

Thomas Daley and Noah Williams of Britain executed near-flawless routines, but had to settle for silver after scoring 463.44 points. Canada's Rylan Wiens and Nathan Zsombor-Murray won bronze with 422.13 points.

After reclaiming the men's synchronized platform title from Daley and his former partner, Matty Lee, who won it at Tokyo 2020, the Chinese pair attributed their golden Olympic debut to their mental resilience and solid training before the Paris Games.

"There are no always-victorious athletes, or teams, in competitive sports. We just prepared the best we could and performed well on the day," said Yang, 26, a five-time world champion.

"Consistent performance comes from hard work on a daily basis. Overall, I think we just outworked most of our rivals in training, so that we could deliver when it matters," he added.

Daley, who made his Olympic debut at Beijing 2008, fell short of upsetting his mighty rivals again, after having almost single-handedly spearheaded the rest of the world's charge against the Chinese team in the past four editions of the Games.

The 30-year-old diving celebrity, however, took pride in having at least proved that even China's "dream team" wasn't invincible.

"I am so incredibly happy to come away with another medal this time with Noah; the achievement is coming back to competition readiness within a year," said Daley, who reversed his retirement plan last year to go for a fifth Olympics, and has only trained with Williams in synchronized platform diving since November.

"China dived absolutely incredible today. Every single one of their divers is almost flawless. We were applying the pressure every single round, yet they didn't fall to it," he said, adding, "What's interesting is being able to have the hope and the belief that it's possible to beat the Chinese divers… they know how to perform the best in competitions."

Team China got its ambition of claiming all eight diving titles up for grabs in Paris off to a flying start on Saturday after women's duo Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen secured the first one in the 3-meter synchronized springboard event at the Paris Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis.

Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook of the United States won silver, while British duo Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen won bronze.

Performing five routines, the same as the Chinese women, in the final, the pair from the US tried to match their world champion opponents in execution, quality and synchronization. It turned out that Team China has dominated the same event six times in a row at the Olympics for a reason.

"The Chinese have been the gold standard in diving for decades," Cook said. "We studied a lot of their films, and we love watching them to learn from their dives. But we are also peers with them. Our goal is to beat them one day."

Cook added: "Following them in the competition helps us do better. They are obviously putting the pressure on us, hitting the dives. They are kind of setting the standard. In a competition, I want to see good quality, and China forced us to have good quality to follow them up like that."

sunxiaochen@chinadaily.com.cn