Paris Olympics: Chen Yuxi, Quan Hongchan Help China Start 3-for-3 with Platform Synchro Gold

Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Perottino / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto

Paris Olympics: Chen Yuxi, Quan Hongchan Help China Start 3-for-3 with Platform Synchro Gold

China’s bid to sweep the diving medals is well underway, at 3-for-3 with gold for Chen Yuxi and Quan Hongchan in the women’s 10-meter synchro platform.

The Chinese pair was first all the way through to score 359.10, easily outdistancing runner-up Jo Jin-Mi and Kim Mi-Rae of North Korea. Great Britain’s Andrea Spendolini Sirieix and Lois Toulson leapt Canada on the fifth and final dive to snag bronze by just over five points.

The American pair of Jessica Parratto and Delaney Schnell got behind early and never recovered, finishing sixth.

China was tops in each round. In an event where only four pairs topped 70 points on any dive, China had three of 80. The clincher was a fourth-round 407C that scored a meet-best 85.44 points.

“I feel so good,” Chen said. “I can improve, we can do better on the synchronization. This is my second Olympics, with a different partner, who is younger. At my first Games I did not understand the meaning of the Olympic Games, so I was more nervous this time.”

Chen is a gold medalist for the third time at just 18 years of age. In Tokyo three years ago, she won this event paired with Zhang Jiaqui and finished second to Quan in individual platform. It’s the second gold for Quan, who is just 17. Between the two prodigies, they have 11 gold and 14 total medals at World Championships.

Jo and Kim started slowly, with just the seventh-best dive out of eight contestants in the first round. But they moved into a tie with the Mexican duo of Gabriela Agundez Garcia and Alejandra Orozco Loza for third after three rounds. The North Koreans kept getting better, scoring 75.84 points in the fourth round and 77.76 in the second.

The medal is the second of these Games for the country, joining silver in mixed doubles table tennis.

“We are not satisfied with the silver medal,” Kim said. “We really wanted to give gold to our country, but the performance was not done as we expected, as we tried, so we have some regrets about it. But we are still happy and excited.”

Canada’s pair of Caeli McKay and Kate Miller were second after three rounds. They slid to third after four, then fourth in the final round. Both pairs doing 5235Bs on the final round, Toulson and Spendolini Sirieix nailed it for 77.76 points, the same as Jo and Kim. Canada got just 68.16 points, falling a spot.

“It was a bit of a rollercoaster but, with any diving event, it can come down to the wire,” Toulson said. “We knew if we kept fighting, we could come back on to the podium. We tried to stay calm and confident. We did our hardest two dives as well as we could really. So we are really proud.”

Mexico finished fifth. Parratto and Schnell, who won silver in this event in Tokyo, were eighth after the first two rounds, with too many bodies between them and the podium. Their best dive was the fourth-round 407C, scoring 70.08 points, the third-best of the round, but it wasn’t until the last round that they were even able to improve from seventh to sixth.

“It wasn’t our best, unfortunately,” Schnell said. “I think we both knew we could’ve been on that podium, but it’s about the journey, it’s not about the results, and I don’t want how it ends to be what defines our career.”

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