Chinese Pair Chen, Jiaqi Dominate in Near-Perfect Platform Performance

TOKYO 2020 SUMMER OLYMPICS – DIVING

July 25-August 7, 2021
Olympic Aquatics Center, Tokyo, Japan
Official Results
Women’s 10-meter platform synchro final – detailed report

The Chinese women moved to 2 gold medals in 2 diving finals, and American divers picked up their first gold medals of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on Tuesday in the women’s synchronized 10m platform final.

The Chinese pair of Chen Yuxi and Jiaqi Zhang, dominated the field, winning by just-shy-of 53 points. By comparison, the margin in the men’s platform final on Monday was just over 1 point.

China has won every edition of the women’s synchronized 10 meter platform event at the Olympics since its debut at Sydney in 2000.

The 17-year old Zhang was the World Champion in 2019, but there she dove with Lu Wei, who is 15 now and was only 13 at those World Championships. Instead, she’s been joined by another 15-year old, Chen, as the youngest pair in the competition.

Final Standings, Women’s 10 meter synchronized platform diving final

China (Chen Yuxi/Zhang Jiaqi) – 363.78
USA (Jessica Parratto/Delaney Schnell) – 310.80
Mexico (Gabriela Agundez Garcia/Alejandra Orozco Loza) – 299.70
Canada (Meaghan Benfeito/Caeli McKay) – 299.16
Germany (Tina Punzel/Christina Wassen) – 292.86
Japan (Matsuri Arai/Minami Itahashi) – 291.42
Great Britain (Eden Cheng/Lois Toulson) – 289.26
Malaysia (Leong Mun Yee/Pamg Pandelela) – 277.98

The Chinese pair had the highest score in every round of the competition, holding an 11 point lead even after the first two compulsory dives – which is a rare margin at this level of competition.

In total, across 5 dives, they received 3 perfect 10s from judges, and had the three highest scoring individual dives in the competition.

In essence: the performance was utter domination, even with the two youngest competitors in the competition (by multiple years).

The American pair that took silver didn’t compete at the 2019 World Championships – like many of the American pairs diving at this meet. They performed better than their counterparts on 3-meter earlier in the meet, who finished 8th out of 8 teams.

They started out the competition a bit rocky, and were just 6th after 2 rounds, but they recovered into the optional dives. They hit scores of 70-70-78 on their last 3 dives to climb from 4th to 2nd place, and had 3 of the best 9 dives in the field by competitors not from China.

The final dive, especially, was one they performed much better at the Olympics than they did at Trials in June.

Jessica Parrato is the daughter of swim coach Mike Parrato, whose trainee Regan Smith won a bronze medal in the 100 backstroke on Tuesday.

Mexico’s Gabriela Agundez and Alejandra Orozco took bronze, a significant improvement over their 9th-place performance at the World Championships in 2019. They used the same dive lineup as they did at those World Championships, but they were just better at every point of the Olympic competition – they didn’t have any real flashy standout dive, but were just consistent throughout the competition.

Of note, Germany’s Tina Punzel, who earned a bronze medal in the 3-meter synchro event, fell short of the double. Diving with a different partner here, Canada placed 5th.

Malaysia, who took silver at the 2019 World Championships, fell to 8th.

US Videos: