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Chinese win women's synchronised platform gold
China's Li Na
and Sang Xue scored an overwhelming victory in the Olympic
synchronised diving women's platform event on Thursday.
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Li Na and Sang Xue of People Republic
of China
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Li,
silver medallist in the individual highboard final last Sunday,
and Sang led through all five rounds of dives to win by 33.09
points from Canada's Emilie Heymans and Anne Montminy, the
individual highboard bronze medallist.
Australians
Rebecca Gilmore and Loudy Tourky came through strongly to
take the bronze, the first Olympic diving medals ever won
by Australian women and the first for the country since Dick
Eve won the men's plain high diving event in 1924.
Gilmore
and Tourky overhauled Austrians Marion Reiff and Anja Richter-Libiseller
in the last round of an event contested by eight pairs.
The
Chinese duo notched 345.12 points from their five dives, with
the Canadians scoring 312.03 and the Australians 301.50.
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Emilie Heymons and Anne Montminy
of Canada
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Synchronised
diving has been admitted to the Olympics for the first time.
The first two titles both went to Russia — Vera Ilyina
and Yulia Pakhalina in the women's three-metre springboard
and Igor Lukashin and Dmitry Sautin in the men's platform.
The
Russians came away empty-handed in Thursday morning's final,
with European silver medallists Yevgenia Olshevskaya and Svetlana
Timoshinina finishing sixth, immediately behind Americans
Jenny Keim and Laura Wilkinson, the newly-crowned Olympic
platform gold medallist.
It
was the second Chinese diving gold of the Sydney Games following
Xiong Ni's second successive victory in the men's three-metre
springboard.
Derek
Parr
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