At the 17th FINA World Championships, Laura Marino and Matthieu Rosset, crowned European champions a month ago, added world gold to their medal treasuries and gave France their first diving title, when they won a close contest in the mixed team event in Budapest’s Duna Arena on Day 5.
Not very much behind were Rommel Pacheco and Viviana Del Angel, who had thrust Mexico into pole position, Pacheco producing two mighty dives from the 3m springboard each worth more than 90 points, leaving the French pair with a test of nerve in their last round of dives.
The European champions,however, who had trailed the Mexicans by a tiny 1.55 points going into the third and final pair of dives, did not buckle when their turn came, Rosset producing a big last effort on the 3m board which pitched the French in front for the first time, the one time it really mattered.
Behind these two stayed Krysta Palmer and David Dinsmore, who secured the bronze, the first diving medal of the championships for the United States, Dinsmore nailing his final dive from the platform to guarantee their place on the podium ahead of Germany’s Maria Kurjo and Patrick Hausding – Hausding being denied a second medal in two days, having claimed bronze with Sascha Klein in the men’s 10m synchro the previous evening.
Marino and Rosset won with 406.40 points, with Del Angel and Pacheco second on 402.35 and Palmer and Dinsmore third on 395.90, just over 16 points ahead of Kurjo and Hausding.
Errors cost China, DPR Korea, Russia and Ukraine their medal chances in a new event introduced at the world championships in Kazan in 2015, when it was won by Tom Daley and Rebecca Gallantree of Great Britain.
Each pair dives in turn over three rounds, each member of the team doing a least one dive apiece on each of the 3m springboard and 10m platform.
Si Yajie and Ren Qian, newly-crowned women’s 10m synchro world champions, pointed China, who have won five titles in Budapest, towards more gold as they claimed top two spots in the semi-final of the women’s 10m.
Si, the 2013 world champion and 2016 Olympic silver medallist, led the way by some 15 points from Ren, who had topped the rankings in the preliminary round but had to recover from a blip in the third round of the semi-final.
Defending world champion Kim Kuk-hyang of DPR Korea, who beat Ren to the gold in Kazan, was third, opening up the prospect of an exciting final, with Olympic bronze medallist Meaghan Benfeito of Canada and Kim’s synchro partner Kim Mi-rae also in the picture.