Qiu Bo matches Greg Louganis’ three world titles as China win 10 out of 13 golds at diving champs
China go one better than gold medal haul from Barcelona
Qiu Bo equalled the great Greg Louganis’s feat of three world titles on Sunday as China finished with 10 medals to underline their domination of the diving competition at the world championships.
With 13 titles on offer this year due to an extended programme, China failed to match their clean sweep of 10 medals at the 2011 championships in Shanghai.
But China’s nine world medals in Barcelona was bettered when Qiu won 10 metres platform gold ahead of American David Boudia who finished behind his arch-rival for the third world championships in a row.
Qiu overtook Boudia in the third round before saving his best dive to the last – 107.30 points with a 3.7 degree of difficulty – to equal Louganis’s three consecutive victories for the United States between 1978 and 1986.
The Chinese finished with 587.00 points, Olympic champion Boudia took silver with 560.20 and Britain Tom Daley claimed bronze.
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"This victory means a lot to me," the 22-year-old Qiu said. "I made almost no mistakes but I will try to improve. I hope that I will perform better at the Olympics."
China dominated the first mixed three-metre synchronised springboard diving event.
The experienced Wang Han and her 17-year-old partner Yang Hao scored an unbeatable 339.90 points, posting the best-scoring dives in three of the five rounds as each of their rivals made mistakes.
Yang said his friendship with Wang, a two-time world silver medalist tasting gold for the first time, had been crucial. “She looked after me and made sure that I wasn’t worried,” he said, adding that Wang was like “a sister” to him.