FINA World Championships Barcelona 2013: Germany snatches the men´s 10 m synchronised title from China

LONCAT INDAH INDONESIA-Sasha Klein and Patrick Hausding have ended China´s seven year reign in the diving competition today at 15th FINA World Championships. The Russian partnership made up of Victor Minibaev and Artem Chesakov went up to second place after a tough fight with the Mexican pair

Excitement until the last round of dives is the only way to describe what happened today at the Municipal Swimming Pools in Montjuïc. Yuan Cao and Yanquan Zhang had come to ratify the title they had owned since Melbourne 2007, but the German partnership was not prepared to give up the possibility of getting gold and the Russians were going to give their all until the end. There was not just a fight for the first two places but also for third and fourth place. The Chinese and the Aztec pair consisting of Germán Sánchez e Iván García fought until the last round for the chance to get on the podium.

The German partnership reached the highest place on the podium with 461.46 points. It seems that the city of Barcelona does not bring much luck to the Chinese team as they repeated the third position that they also had to be happy with in Barcelona 2003. Going over the final scores shows the potency of Minibaev and Chesakov to climb the positions in the qualification and finish with 445.95 points. Cao and Zhang were only 0.39 tenths apart and finished with 445.56.

“We can´t believe that the dream has come true. We are really happy, and we don´t know what to say. The dream has come true. We have the positive feeling, and positive motivation for the next competitions”, have declared both German divers after his sensational performance.

Klein and Hausding achieved the best score in the last round and the judges gave them a score of 96.12 for execution for their backwards dive with two and a half somersaults and two and a half twists entering the water head first. The Chinese pair executed the same exercise in the last round and were awarded 99.36 but it was not enough to reach the Russian duo in second place despite the fact that in the same round and with the same dive they had got 88.56 points.

The duel from the 10 metre platform will be repeated on an individual level in the preliminaries and semifinals on the 27th July with the big final taking place on 28th July.

Tomorrow the Montjuïc Municipal Swimming Pools will open its doors again to spectators for the preliminary round of the women´s 10 m synchronised (10.00 am – 12.45 pm) and two finals: men´s 1 m springboard (2.00 pm – 3.25 pm) and women´s 10 m synchronized (5.30 pm – 6.50 pm).

Facts & Features:

Germany's Sascha Klein and Patrick Hausding won the gold medal in the Men's 10m Platform Synchro event, providing a stunning start to the men's diving competition at the 2013 Aquatics World Championships. China, which had won all 10 events in Shanghai two years ago, will not provide another clean sweep.

Germany won their first gold medal in Diving events at the World Championships. Since Germany's reunification, their divers had won silver medals but until today never a gold.

China's divers came third in this event. It was only the second time in the history of the Aquatics World Championships that no Chinese pairing made it into the top two of one of the Synchro events. In this very event in 2003, also in Barcelona, Australia took gold and Ukraine collected silver, as China were made to settle for bronze.

China have dominated this event in World Championships history, winning a medal in all seven previous World Championship editions in which this event was held, collecting five gold, one silver and one bronze medal.