Laugher Misses Final Dive, Falls From 1st To 3rd, Xie Repeats As 3m Dive Champ

2019 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS – DIVING

  • July 12th-20th, 2019
  • Nambu University Municipal Aquatics Center, Gwangju, South Korea
  • Diving Results

Xie Siyi won his second gold medal of the 2019 World Championships and his fourth gold medal overall as China went 1-2 in men’s 3-meter.

Men’s 3-meter Springboard

Xie has now earned a gold medal at three straight World Championships. He won 1-meter back in 2015 and took the 3-meter title in 2017. This year, he won both 3-meter individual and 3-meter synchro on the men’s side.

In fact, the winning 3-meter synchro duo went 1-2  in the individual 3-meter competition. Cao Yuan won his third medal of these World Champs after gold in the synchro 3-meter and 10-meter events.

Xie won by about 37 points, getting a massive 102-point final dive, a front four-and-a-half with a 3.8 degree of difficulty that he hit for straight 9.0s and 9.5s. Before that, Xie was sitting second behind Britain’s Jack Laugherthe silver medalist from synchro 3-meter.

Both Xie and Cao passed up Laugher on the final dive. Cao scored 89.3 points on his own front four-and-a-half, and Laugher scored just 30 points, getting mostly 2.5s and 3.0s on a back three-and-a-half he missed badly.

Medal Finishers:

  1. Xie Siyi (CHN) – 545.45
  2. Cao Yuan (CHN) – 517.85
  3. Jack Laugher (GBR) – 504.55

MEDALS TABLE AFTER JULY 18TH

China has hit double-digit golds now, and is two total medals from matching its 2017 performance. China last swept all the diving events in 2011, when they hosted the event in Shanghai.

Tomorrow will feature the women’s 3-meter springboard, which should be another win for China. Defending champ Shi Tingmao qualified top overall today. Saturday will bring the final two events, the men’s 10-meter and the mixed synchro 3-meter. China won the latter at 2017 Worlds, but Brit Tom Daley won the former.

Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total
1  China 10 2 1 13
2  Russia 0 3 0 3
3  Mexico 0 1 3 4
 United States 0 1 3 4
5  Great Britain 0 1 2 3
6  Canada 0 1 0 1
 Malaysia 0 1 0 1
8  South Korea* 0 0 1 1
Totals (8 nations) 10 10 10 30

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Scott Shuppert
4 years ago

A ft 4 1/2 for 9’s… How do you even compete against that?

Scott Shuppert
4 years ago

A ft 4 1/2 for 9’s… Wow. How do you compete against that?

Sports fan
4 years ago

Are Chinese athletes are clean ? Thoughts?

Taa
Reply to  Sports fan
4 years ago

They probably give 12-13 yo girls adderall and throw them up on the platform to dive 5-6 hours a day. They need to have a minimum age limit just like gymnastics because it’s borderline abuse

Dee
Reply to  Sports fan
4 years ago

No doping could explain this domination in such a technical sport. They are just sublime – The discipline and work ethic that goes in to doing what they do is hard to fathom.

AnEn
Reply to  Sports fan
4 years ago

Don’t know if they are clean, but i am pretty sure that if all athletes in diving would be clean, China would still completely dominate this event. This is a popular sport in China (and not really popular in any of the other big sporting nations) and they have more than 1 billion people and are known for training very hard from an early age on, so it is only logical that they dominate this like they dominate table tennis.

Dee
4 years ago

Gutted for Jack, he was miles ahead and on course for an absolutely huge score around the 560pt mark.

Jeff
Reply to  Dee
4 years ago

What’s more annoying is he was the only realistic contender to beat any of China’s athletes. This means now he’s lost gold China will go 13 for 13 golds and will probably end up topping the overall medal table.

Superfan
Reply to  Dee
4 years ago

I was watching live too and felt really bad since he dominated the field on first 5 dives. Didn’t he have a poor last dive in semis too? This final might haunt him for a while. He is a great diver to watch….big and strong and stilll gets in the water with little splash! Good luck Jack

Dee
Reply to  Superfan
4 years ago

He did, also dropped his last dive when close to nailed on Commonwealth Gold in 2014. He’s the best in the World, but with that comes high tariff amd high risk. He wins if he hits, but it can go tits up.

Tim
Reply to  Dee
4 years ago

“He’s the best in the World” literally a couple of hours ago we found out he’s not.

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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