Maddison Keeney of Australia on Saturday produced a brilliant final dive to beat Nadezhda Bazhina of Russia to the women’s 1m springboard title and make up for past disappointment at the world swimming championships.
Bazhina had taken over the lead from Keeney going into the final round, but the Australian finished with a flourish — nailing a forward two-and-a-half somersaults with one twist — for 314.95 points to beat the Russian by 10.25 and claim her first gold medal.
Nerves got the better of Keeney at the worlds in Kazan, Russia, in 2015, when she flunked her final dive and blew any chance of a podium place, but there was no such embarrassment this time.
Photo: EPA
“I wanted to redeem myself. I didn’t need to doubt myself. I didn’t need to think about what happened in the past because I knew that all the training, all the hard work I’d done, would pay off,” Keeney said.
She called her parents afterward, fighting back tears.
European champion Elena Bertocchi of Italy won bronze with 296.40, ahead of China’s Chen Yiwen and Russia’s Maria Polyakova.
Photo: EPA
China failed to make the podium in women’s 1m springboard at the worlds for the first time since 2003.
Ilia Zakharov and Evgenii Kuznetsov of Russia claimed the men’s 3m springboard synchronized diving title with a fine forward four-and-a-half somersaults tuck to snatch the win from Xie Siyi and Cao Yuan of China.
The Russian pair finished with 450.30 points, 6.9 ahead of Xie and Cao, who had been leading from the start.
China, which had won the event at eight of the last nine worlds, missed out on gold for the first time since 2003.
Oleg Kolodiy and Illya Kvasha of Ukraine claimed bronze on 429.99, while Olympic champions Jack Laugher and Chris Mears of Britain missed out by finishing fourth.
Earlier, Ren Qian and Lian Junjie won the mixed 10-meter synchronized diving title for China’s first gold of the worlds.
Ren and Lian, who won all four meets at the Diving World Series this season, produced a near flawless performance to rank first after each of the five dives for a total of 352.98.
The 16-year-old Lian became the first man born after Jan. 1, 2000 to win a diving medal at the worlds.
Britain’s Matthew Lee and Lois Toulson took silver with 323.28.
Taiwan’s Chou Tien-chen yesterday exited at the BWF World Tour Finals in China, losing in the semi-finals to China’s world No. 1 Shi Yuqi. Shi, who was named the BWF Men’s Singles Player of the Year, had a 9-4 record against Chou going into the match. He extended that record to 9-5 with a 21-14, 21-18 victory. Chou advanced to the men’s singles semi-finals on Friday by upsetting top-seeded Anders Antonsen of Denmark in a must-win match at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium. The 16-21, 21-18, 21-15 victory saw Chou secure his second semi-finals appearance at the tournament, despite his relatively older
India’s chess star Gukesh Dommaraju returned to a hero’s welcome in his home city yesterday after becoming the youngest world champion aged only 18. Hundreds of fans crowded the arrivals area of Chennai International Airport, cheering alongside banks of television cameras as Gukesh made his way out of the airport after victory in taking the World Chess Championship title. “It means a lot to bring back the trophy to India,” Gukesh told reporters, with garlands of flowers draped around his neck, brandishing the glittering trophy in his hand. “I can see the support and what it means to India, I
Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest chess world champion on Thursday after beating the defending champion Ding Liren of China in the final match of their series in Singapore. Dommaraju, 18, secured 7.5 points against 6.5 of his Chinese rival in the contest, surpassing the achievement of Russia’s Garry Kasparov, who won the title at the age of 22. The Indian teen prodigy has long been considered a rising star in the chess world after he became a chess grandmaster at 12. He had entered the match as the youngest-ever challenger to the world crown after winning the Candidates tournament earlier
China yesterday jailed former English Premier League star and China men’s national coach Li Tie for 20 years for bribery, snaring one of the country’s greatest soccer figures in a sweeping government crackdown on corruption in sport. Chinese President Xi Jinping has waged an unrelenting campaign against deep-seated official corruption since coming to power more than a decade ago. Anti-graft authorities took aim at the sport industry in 2022 and have announced a string of convictions for former soccer administrators this week. In the highest-profile case to date, a court in Hubei Province yesterday said that Li had been sentenced to “fixed-term imprisonment
RSS