As the third leg of the FINA NVC Diving World Series lands in London British diving took advantage of the home crowd support showing impressive form to take two podium finishes on day one.
Chris Mears and Jack Laugher led the medal charge striking silver in the Men’s 3m Synchro final.
With a final dive score of 95.76, the pair capitalized on their strong start to win their debut medal of the 2015 series with 433.80 – a FINA Diving World Series best performance.
The City of Leeds teammates rose to the occasion in front of the British crowd, building through each round to conclude with their most difficult dive – the Forward 4 ½ Somersault Pike.
Laugher said: “Our World Series started off with two fourth places which for us was really tough, we knew things had to change and we’ve managed to rectify those mistakes today. We’ve improved our routine we are more focused coming into this event in front of the home crowd.”
Mears said: “We’re really going to aim to put out our best performances in the final two legs of the series now. Ahead of the World Championships this summer it’s great to put it in people’s minds that we do belong on the podium. It’s a good position to be in.”
China’s Kai Qin and Yuan Cao led from the off to take gold with 447.75 points ahead of Britain and the Russian pairing of Ilia Zakharov and Evgeny Kuznetsov (429.21 points).
For the second time in the 2015 series, Tonia Couch and Sarah Barrow made the podium taking bronze in the Women’s 10m Synchro platform final.
The British pair, who train together in Plymouth with coach Andy Banks, collected their second synchro medal after their third place finish in Kazan last week.
Saving the best until last, Couch and Barrow scored 73.92 for their Back 2 ½ Somersault 1 ½ Twists to secure a total of 311.88points – just three points shy of their FINA Diving World Series best score.
25 year old Couch said: “We’re absolutely over the moon, we really focused on what we had to do today and we achieved it.
“We’ve got the World Championships to look forward to this year and to be consistently winning medals during this series is a great indicator of where we are going into that competition.”
Barrow said: “We felt a little bit of pressure coming into the London leg after our bronze last week in Russia, especially in front of a home crowd and friends and family. We managed to keep the momentum going from last week so we’re really happy.”
The formidable Chinese pairing of Ruolin Chen and Huixia Liu made it four out of four wins in the series so far as they dived to gold in 332.88, with Malaysia winning the cat and mouse battle for silver with a total score of 314.94.
A hard fought Women’s 3m Synchro final saw Britain’s Rebecca Gallantree and Alicia Blagg narrowly missing out on the medals by an agonising 0.24 points to place them fourth after five rounds.
With a mix of youth and experience, the pair showed strength in depth to better their performance from Kazan last week by over 30 points tallying an impressive 295.44 points.
Blagg said: “We’re pretty gutted about being so close to the bronze medal, but there are some positives to take away from it and there are a lot of things that we can work on as well.
“It’s amazing being back here in London diving, the crowd was amazing and we got the biggest cheer out of everyone here.”
Gallantree said: “Last week in Kazan we were on for a medal and then had a disaster dive at the end, so it’s great that we could be more consistent here. Our back 2 ½ was much better than it has been so that’s great.”
Placing themselves at the top of the podium, China once again dominated as Minxia Wu and Tingmao Shi took gold with 331.50 points from Italy’s Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallape (314.40 points) and Canada’s Jennifer Abel and Pamela Ware (295.68 points).
In the Men’s 10m Synchro platform final, new British duo of Matthew Lee and James Denny took to the boards in their FINA Diving World Series debut.
A solid opening dive saw them sitting comfortably in the mix against an eight-strong field of world class synchro divers, finishing fifth after all six rounds of competition with 385.32 points.
Denny said: “I’m absolutely buzzing after that performance, we put in some great dives and we didn’t really make many mistakes. It’s great experience for us moving on hopefully to future events.”
Lee said: “It was so much fun today. After ever dive we were loving it because the atmosphere in here was so amazing.”
Again it was China who paved the way at the top of the leader board, carving a 40 point lead out of the field for a final points score of 474.84 and the gold, ahead of Germany (427.04) and Mexico (420.78).
Diving News is courtesy of British Swimming.
