World University Games: China Wins 12 of 15 Diving Golds
China won gold in 12 of the 15 diving events at the World University Games, held this week in Berlin, Germany.
The Chinese athletes took 20 total medals, with eight silvers, at the Europe SportsPark Aquatics Center. The other three medals went to German divers, with only four nations of the 19 competing getting on the medal table.
The United States took home nine medals, but no gold, and South Korea added seven medals.
Wang Weiying led the way for China with five medals, four of them gold. She managed both gold in the 3-meter springboard and silver on platform plus 3-meter women’s synchro gold and mixed platform synchro gold.
World University Games Diving Medal Table
- (g-s-b—t)
- China 12-8-0—20
- Germany 3-2-4—9
- United States 0-4-5—9
- South Korea 0-1-6—7
Men’s platform synchro gold medalists Zheng Junzhi and Mo Yonghua won four medals each, as did springboard diver Hu Yukang. Ouyang Yu won women’s 1-meter springboard and teamed with Wang to win the women’s 3-meter synchro.
The meet started on a down note for the Chinese contingent, though, with the German duo of Lena Hentschel and Luis Avila Sanchez winning the mixed 3-meter synchro. China’s Fan Yi and Mei Yingxin produced the sixth-best dives of each of the first two rounds, digging a hole from which they didn’t escape. Hentschel-Avila Sanchez scored 288.21, besting the Chinese pair by 12.8 points.
China bounced back quickly, with He Yanwei and Lu Wei leading start-to-finish in the women’s platform synchro, scoring 330.18 points. They were 35 points clear of Germany’s of Pauline Pfeif and Carolina Coordes.
Germany’s Moritz Wesemann supplied the most exciting event of the meet in the men’s 3-meter springboard final. The Paris Olympian who dives at USC was eighth after one round and fifth after two. But three 80-point dives allowed him to leap from second to first in the final round to score 454.20 points and end up 5.75 points ahead of Hu for gold. The other Chinese diver, Zhang Wenao, was first after three rounds before producing the 12th-, 11th- and ninth-best dives of the final three rounds to plummet to seventh.
China’s 3-meter women’s synchro pairing of Ouyang and Wang scored 294.90 points, leading wire-to-wire. The American duo of Lanie Gutch and Ellie Joyce landed second with a score of 265.98, leapfrogging Hentschel and Jette Muller in the final round.
The men’s platform final was a two-man battle between the Chinese divers, with Zheng scoring 455.10 to edge his synchro partner Mo by 6.4 points. Kim Yeong-taek of South Korea was third. The duo came back the next day with a start-to-finish in synchro, scoring 437.31 points and delivering the best dive in four of six rounds to finish 36.6 points up on the German duo of Jaden Eikermann and Avila Sanchez.
On women’s platform, Lu and Wang went back and forth. Wang led for the first two rounds before Lu scored 87.45 and 89.10 on consecutive dives to take control and score 400.35 points. That was 13.2 points ahead of her countrywoman, with Pfeif more than 30 points clear of American Sophia McAfee for bronze.
Wang had no such bobbles on 3-meter springboard, leading after every round and scoring 344.25 points. She was 25.7 points ahead of teammate Qu Zhixin, who never quite recovered from spotting Wang 16 points in seventh place in the first round. Hentschel jumped teammate Muller in the fifth and final round to get bronze by two-tenths of a point.
China’s normal dominance was in place by the final two days of the meet. Zhang led for all but the first round of the men’s 1-meter springboard final, scoring 425.85 points to dominate by 57 points. Second was Hu, though dramatically so, sitting seventh at the midway point and fourth before a 72-point final dive vaulted him to silver. Max Miller of the U.S. had been second before the 12th-best dive of the final round dropped him to fifth.
On the final night, Ouyang and Wang Yi went 1-2 in women’s springboard, the former scoring 273.85 to beat her teammate by 7.60 points.
Zhang and Hu won the men’s 3-meter synchro final with a score of 412.62, ahead of the field at every turn. Americans Joshua Sollenberger and Luke Sitz finished second with a score of 380.34. China also won the four-team mixed platform synchro via Zheng and Wang Weiying with a score of 341.94.
The Americans ended up with four silver and five bronze, with silver in the women’s team competition and bronze in the men’s. Sitz augmented his synchro silver with 3-meter springboard bronze. Gutch supplemented her silver on 3-meter springboard synchro with bronze on platform synchro alongside Kayleigh Clark. Joyce got a second medal by pairing with Miller for bronze in mixed 3-meter synchro, and McAfee got her medal alongside Kaden Springfield in mixed platform synchro with a silver finish.
The American men’s platform duo of Max Weinrich and Dash Glasberg was ranked second after three dives of the six-round final but slipped to fourth, six-tenths of a point off the podium.
The other individual American medal came from Avery Giese, who got bronze on women’s 1-meter. Miller was ninth in men’s 3-meter and fifth in 1-meter, while Weinrich finished seventh and Drew Bennett ninth in men’s platform.
Behind McAfee’s fourth-place finish on platform, Taylor Fox finished sixth for the U.S. Katerina Hoffman finished fifth for the U.S. on women’s 3-meter, with Giese 10th.
Hentschel, the German Olympic bronze medalist who dove for Ohio State, earned bronze medals on 3-meter and 3-meter synchro to go with the 3-meter mixed synchro gold. Pfeif won one medal of each color, including the mixed team event.
Kim Yeong-taek ended up with six medals, including bronze in men’s platform and silver in the men’s team competition.
