 Star pair maintain status quo
By Lei Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-12 08:51 China's young stars Lin Yue and Huo Liang continued China's domination of diving by winning the gold medals in the men's 10m platform synchronized event yesterday. They took gold with 468.18 points, 17.76 points ahead of Patrick Hausding and Sascha Klein of Germany who secured 450.42 points. It was the first Olympics outing for the teenage pair and Lin at 17 became the second-youngest gold medalist in an Olympic men's diving event, behind fellow countryman Sun Shuwei's record of winning gold at 16 years and 185 days at the 1992 Barcelona Games. "I have dreamed of an Olympic gold medal ever since I came to know what diving is," said Lin, who started in the sport aged four. "Since it is our first Olympic Games, we were very nervous before the Games, but our coaches and team manager told us to be relaxed and focus on our own dives. We made it and won finally." Huo, who is 18, added: "Winning the Olympic gold medal is a good start."
The event threw up an interesting tussle for the silver medal with the Germans overtaking Russians Gleb Galperin and Dmitriy Dobroskok with their last dive. They finished just 5.16 points behind on 445.26. But the main focus of the home audience at the Water Cube was the Chinese duo. Since the 2006 Doha Asian Games, they have dominated platform synchronized diving. In the last two years, they have swept golds at almost all international events. Although there was one nervous moment yesterday when Lin short-rotated in the last dive, the divers still had enough of a point margin to win. The Russian pair also looked gold contenders at one point until their fifth dive, in which Dobroskok fluffed his entry. "I made the mistake in the fifth dive. It is a technical mistake," said Dobroskok, who was the silver medalists at the 2007 World Championships with his partner in Melbourne. "I was a bit too pressed up at the beginning of the dive and didn't have strong entry." The 2004 Athens Games bronze medalists Robert Newbery and Mathew Helm from Australia finished fourth on 444.84 points. British prodigy Thomas Daley, one of the stars of the Games out of the pool, failed in his bid to win a medal. He wrapped up his first Olympics by finishing last of the eight pairs. "We didn't dive our best, actually this is probably our worst result in a competition," said the 14-year-old Daley. "Naturally I'd love to do the whole competition over again. But it's been my dream to go to the Olympics and now I can say after tonight that I'm an Olympian. So, I can't be too disappointed. It was really good fun. I was really excited. I had an awesome time." China's star of the day Lin could also compete in the 10m platform individual event, which starts with preliminaries on Friday. Although it is reported that Lin was not in good form in recent training, the newly-crowned Olympic champion expressed his confidence in a second gold. "My form is getting better gradually with the help of my coaches and other team members," Lin said. "I have the support of the whole team and I'm confident of doing better to stand on the highest podium again." But the team official said it hasn't been decided yet who will compete in the individual event, since she is worried about Lin's condition. "Lin has grown more than 10cm and it affected our training a lot," said China's team manager Zhou Jihong. "His condition wasn't good until the last two weeks of our training camp in Jinan. We haven't decided who will participate in the individual yet." (China Daily 08/12/2008 page7) |
