Editorial content for the 2023 World Aquatics Championships is sponsored by FINIS, a longtime partner of Swimming World and leading innovator of suits, goggles and equipment. China Wins Three Gold Medals on First Day of Diving at Worlds China opened the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka with three gold medals, a fitting start for the world’s most dominant diving nation. Wang Feilong and Zhang Jiaqi won the mixed 10-meter platform synchro on Saturday. Lin Shan and Li Yiaje went 1-2 in women’s 1-meter springboard, then the pair of Long Daoyi and Wang Zonguyan took the men’s 3-meter springboard. The 1-meter event provided the most drama on Day 1. Lin led all the way, winning with 318.60 points. Li was the clear second with 3:06.35, and while she had the best dive of the fourth round with a score of 61.50, she couldn’t keep the pressure on Lin. “Not a lot came to my mind when I realized that I had won the gold medal,” Lin said. “I didn’t feel much pressure, it was more about energy and encouragement. I thank (my friends, family and even the fans) for coming to Japan to cheer for the Chinese team. I think (my dive in) the third round was my best performance.” Third place was the hotly contested one. A poor first-round dive had Canada’s playing catch-up the whole way. She moved from 12th after one round to third after two, delivering the best dive of the entire competition, a 69.00-pointer on her 305C. But Mexico’s Aranza Vazquez Montano delivered a massive dive in the final round, scoring 67.50 on her 305C to leap from fifth after three rounds to bronze. The NCAA 3-meter champ from the University of North Carolina scored 285.05 points, just edging Ware’s 284.40. “I just trusted myself, I knew I could do a good dive,” Vazquez said. “We were close, and (I knew that) everything was going to be determined by the last round. It was the longest ten seconds of my life having to wait for those scores to come up.” Hailey Hernandez was the top American finisher, in seventh. The Chinese pairings faced little opposition on the way to gold. Long and Wang supplied the highest-scoring dive of five of the six rounds, all but the fifth. They tallied 456.33 points. The 100.32 scored on a masterpiece final dive, a 109C, was far and away the best executed of the event. None of the other pairings topped 84 points with any of their dives. Great Britain’s Anthony Harding and Jack Laugher kept pace as best they could. They were second all the way, and their dive of 83.22 points in the fifth round clawed back 10 points on the leading pair from China. They scored 424.62 points, and while it wasn’t enough for gold, it was plenty for the expectations of Laugher, who has struggled with a knee injury this year and seen Harding battled through ailments. “We are here, we’ve done the job, we’re really happy with the performance, there are still some things to improve on,” Laugher, a three-time Olympic medalist, said. “Between Anthony and I, we just want to thank everyone who has been involved in getting us to where we are now – without the physios, doctors, medical staff, our coaches, friends and family and everyone involved in our team, we would not be here without them. It’s been a very emotional day with some dropped dives here and there, but we’re really happy overall.” The French duo of Jules Bouyer and Alexis Jandard weathered a terrible middle two dives to score 389.10 points and nip the Americans (385.23) to bronze. They and the Americans were tied for fourth after the first two rounds, then the U.S. duo of Tyler Downs and Greg Duncan moved into third place, as the French delivered the 12th-best dive of round 3 and 10th in round 4. But they scored 82.62 on the fifth round and 78.75 on the sixth, while Downs and Duncan had the worst dive of the final round, earning just 63 points to Bouyer and Jandard’s 78.75. The Americas did, however, secure an Olympic quota space, with the French already guaranteed a spot in the Paris Games they will host. Wang and Zhang led wire-to-wire in the 10-meter mixed platform, scoring 339.54. Mexico finished strong, with Jose Balleza Isaias and Viviana del Angel Peniche hitting the high-scoring dives of the last two rounds – 75.84 and 76.80 – to surge to silver in 313.44. Hiroki Ito and Minami Itahashi brought home the host nation’s first medal with a bronze, scoring 305.34. “The reason we were able to pull ourselves together and have a good performance was because of the support of the fans every time we were introduced,” Ito said. “I have nothing but appreciation for all of our Japanese fans. We did not feel much pressure. I knew that if we got a decisive score in the third round with the 407C dive, we could ride that wave all the way to the podium. I am glad that we were able to do that.”
