LONDON, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese divers Qin Kai and Luo Yutong were crowned at men's synchronised three-meter springboard event at the 18th FINA Diving World Cup here on Monday.
They amassed a total of 445.71 points. Russian divers Dvgeny Kuznetsov and Illya Zakharov, who stunned spectators at the Shanghai diving world championships last year with their difficult yet impeccable last dive, coded as 109C, finished second with 439. 83 points.
The bronze was taken by Lomas Bryan Nickson and Huang Qiang from Malaysia, who chalked up 432.09 points. The Chinese pair collected the highest score of 53.40 points after the first dive. They made a decent second dive, but the American duo including veteran Troy Dumais, runner-up of the men's 3m springboard at Rome worlds, did better with a tuck position to surpass.
However, Dumais and his partner blundered in the third round to fall distant behind, whereas Qin and Luo managed to retain the lead with their stable performances. They chose to make a most difficult fifth dive, the 109C which was a tuck position of forward 4 and a half sommersault, the one Russian divers did in Shanghai.
It was the first time for Luo Yutong, Beijing Olympic gold medalist Qin's new partner, to practise the dive in world competitions.
In the preliminary session, they earned as high as 94.62 points. This time, they got 87.78 points, lower than their Russian counterparts but enough to lift them to the medal podium.