Wu is the first diver to win four Olympic gold medals in a single event.
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Chinese duo Wu Minxia and Shi Tingmao got their nation’s pursuit of a clean sweep of the diving events at Rio 2016 off to the ideal start as they secured the Olympic three metres synchronised springboard gold medal with a formidable performance at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre today.
Italy’s Tania Cagnotto, right, and Francesca Dallape pose with their silver medals after the women’s synchronized 3-meter springboard diving final in the Maria Lenk Aquatic Center at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, Aug. 7, 2016. She won’t defend that title in Rio.
At the age of 30, she also became the oldest women’s victor in Olympic diving history, and Wu admitted feeling those years in the run-up.
Wu passed Guo to become the first man or woman with seven diving medals in total, and she is now the only person to win the 3m event in four successive Games.
Wu won the 3m synchronised springboard in 2004 and 2008 with Guo, and in 2012 with He Zi. Her father Giorgio won four Olympic diving medals (two silvers, two bronzes) in between 1972 and 1980. The team had the gold medal looked up the from the very first dive, and the Italians held the second position after each dive also.
Maddison Keeney and Anabelle Smith of Australia recovered from a poor start to take bronze.
“We are used to diving against the Chinese”, Cagnotto said.
Gallantree and Blagg, who won Commonwealth Gold in Glasgow in 2014, were in joint third after the first two dives but were overtaken in the final three dives.
The victory could help Wu emerge from the shadow of her former dive partner Guo, the Chinese diving diva who dominated the sport in Games past.
“A few times during the last two years Canada has always beaten us by a small margin so for us to come up on top by a small margin is just insane”, Smith said. The Canadians ended up finishing in fourth by less than a point, after scoring a 67.5 on the final dive.
“You know when you missed a dive”, Abel said.
“I did not know what the results would be”.
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The win kicked off the Olympic diving competition as well as China’s hopes of a sweep of all eight men’s and women’s events.
