Diving World Cup: Ren Qian wins the 10m on birthday

Ren Qian of China had a great present on Sunday February 21, winning the women’s 10m platform, at the 20th FINA Diving World Cup at Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre in Rio (BRA).

The athlete, who celebrated her 15th birthday on Saturday, totalled 10 points in her last dive and dominated the FINA world ranking of the event. She was the silver medal in FINA World Championships, in Kazan (RUS), last summer.

The Chinese led the event since the beginning, but executed perfectly the back two and a half somersault and a half twist and finish the third day of competition with 454,65 points and a gold medal.

“I only did my best and what I do in my training. My first 10 was last year. I’m not feeling pressure because of the Olympics because we will have other competitions until there, so I think that it’s necessary to think of a competition at a time “ said Ren, who added that she had a small birthday celebration with the Chinese team.

Other Chinese, Si Yajie was the silver medal also with high scores. She got 412.80 points. The Australian Melissa Wu stayed with the bronze medal with 380.50 points.

China, as usual, dominated the day. The world champions from China – Chen Aisen and Lin Yue – confirmed their dominance winning the men’s 10m synchro scoring 456. The pair, who was gold medallist at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, was a little bit surprised because of the weather. The thunderstorms that have hit Rio de Janeiro at the end of every day have been a challenge for the organisation and for the athletes. At the end of the fifth round wind, rain and lightning stopped the competition for forty minutes.

“For us the difficult is the instability, alternating sun, rain and mainly the wind. But on the moment that we are over the platform we are so concentrated that we can’t see anything” said Lin, who added that the Chinese team is like a big family.

The podium was completed by Germany (448, 44) who entered with Patrick Hausding and Sacha Klein and Great Britain (446, 40) with Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfelow. Both countries achieved the Olympic spot and will be in Rio, in August, together with China, Mexico and Russia (teams that were on the podium in the World Championships in Kazan), Brazil as a host and also the United States (439,95) with David Boudia and Steele Johnson, Ukraine (427,35) with Maksym Dolgov and Oleksandr Gorshkovoz, respectively for the fourth and fifth place in this FINA Diving World Cup.

The Americans said that they like when it rains and considered the weather as a great training for the Olympics.

“One of our strengths is the mental control, so when stopped because of the rain we think that it was good because we know that it is not easy for some athletes maintain the focus. We will have some competitions until the Olympics and time to improve our performance. Now we achieved our goal that was the Olympic spot.”

Monday February 22 will begin with the women’s 3m springboard preliminaries in the morning and in the afternoon, the semi-final and the final of men’s 3m springboard will take place.