World Championships: China Sweep Golds, with Bronze for U.S. Men
China picked up two more gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore. The men’s 10-meter synchro involved a final-round lead change, a winning margin of less than a point and a spot for the American men to on the podium in bronze position.
Chen Jia and Chen Yiwen won gold in women’s 3-meter synchro, a typically dominant performance for the world’s preeminent diving power that resulted in 325.20 points, a winning margin of 26.85 and the lead after every round.
The men’s platform synchro, however, was interesting, even if it ended with China atop the podium for the seventh time in eight events in Singapore. After leading throughout prelims and the first three rounds of finals, the duo of Cheng Zilong and Zhu Zhifeng missed their fourth dive, putting up just 60.18 points for the lowest score of eight tandems in the final that sent them briefly to third.
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But the bobble was momentary, the duo delivering the best dive of each of the last two rounds to climb to second, then first, 0.93 points ahead of the Neutral Athletes B duo of Nikita Shleikher and Ruslan Ternovoi.
Cheng and Zhu trailed by 20.88 points after their Round 4 miscue. They scored 87.69 on the fifth round, while the NAB duo got 79.92 on the same 109C.
Both teams lined up 5255Bs for the final round. The NAB pair hit it for 76.68, with a cushion of 13.11 points. It nearly survived, with Cheng and Zhu converting for 90.72 points, the highest score of the finals to just claw up to gold.
Joshua Hedberg and Carson Tyler of the United States; Photo Courtesy: World Aquatics/Singapore 2025
“We believed in each other,” Cheng said. “During our training, we didn’t really have that many issues, so we just trusted each other. I trusted in (Zhu) for Dive 109C and Dive 5255B and I trusted that we would be able to close it out. These are not difficult for him, and in training we’re not bad. It was all about mutual trust.”
Americans Joshua Hedberg and Carson Tyler also finished strong, getting bronze for their efforts. They were eighth after two rounds, but via the second-best dives of the fourth and fifth rounds, they started to climb up from fifth. They hit for no less than 79.92 points on each of their last three dives, with that total in the final round sealing bronze.
For Tyler, the medal is his second at Worlds, joining bronze at platform mixed synchro in Budapest in 2022.
“It means a lot,” Tyler said. “It’s been a long road of training, coming back from the Olympics…we really put a lot of effort into this medal, so it means a ton.”
“This is my first senior world medal, and I can’t be happier,” Hedberg said. “I think we just tried to step it up for the finals, dive when it counts, and just perform our best.”
The Americans finished nearly 12 points ahead of British duo Kyle Kothari and Robbie Lee. The Ukrainian duo of Mark Hrytsenko and Oleskii Sereda as fifth.
Cheng is in his first World Championships; this is his second gold, along with China winning the mixed team event. Zhu has mixed 3-meter synchro gold from 2022 and 2023, but this is his first Worlds medal on platform.
One need not worry about such intrigue in the women’s 3-meter synchro. Chen and Chen of China led after every round and had the highest-scoring dive of each of the five rounds to tally 325.20.
That’s the ninth medal and eighth goal for Chen Yiwen.
“I think it’s been a smooth competition for us,” she said. “We were quite nervous during training these few days and were a bit tight. I think that affected the competition a little bit; we were a little conservative. I guess you can say we’re quite a good partnership. We’re all high-level athletes, and we know how to handle things, our chemistry, and do what we need to do for a competition.”
Britain’s Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen, the bronze medalists in Paris last summer, were second to China with a score of 298.35, four points clear of the Mexico’s Lia Cueva Lobato and Mia Cueva Lobato, 14-year-old twins.
“We’re very happy and really pleased,” Harper said. “Coming off the back of last year’s Olympic medal, we were definitely setting the expectation of a medal again. But also, we were really focusing on the performance today, so we’re really pleased that we performed well and ended up with a silver medal.”
Australia finished fourth, with 1-meter champ Maddison Keeney teaming with Alysha Koloi. The American duo of Bailee Sturgill and Lily Witte finished seventh.
