TEENAGE sensation Lian Junjie and Si Yajie sparked a golden treble for Chinese divers on Saturday by sweeping to victory in the mixed 10m synchro final in Gwangju.
Chen Yiwen made it two out of two in the women’s one-metre springboard, before Xie Siyi and Cao Yuan completed a Chinese hat-trick in the men’s 3m springboard synchro.
Eighteen-year-old Junjie retained the title he won with Rio Olympic champion Ren Qian in Budapest two years ago as he and Yajie racked up a winning total of 346.14 points — a whopping 35 points clear of their nearest rivals.
Russian’s Ekaterina Beliaeva-Viktor Minibaev were distant runners-up on 311.28 points followed by Mexico’s Maria Jose Sanchez-Jose Balleza Isaias (287.64).
For Yajie, who took silver behind Qian in the women’s 10m platform at the 2016 Rio Games, it was a fourth world title.
She captured the 10m gold as a 14-year-old at the 2013 Barcelona edition, won the mixed synchro with Tai Xiaohu in Kazan two years later and partnered Qian to victory in the women’s 10m synchro in 2017.
Yiwen barely made a splash as she breezed to gold in the 1m springboard with a 285.45 total, comfortably clear of American Sarah Bacon and South Korean Kim Su-ji, who earned the day’s biggest cheer after claiming the host nation’s first medal.
Siyi and Olympic champion Yuan were also too strong for their rivals as they stormed to gold with 439.74 points, with Britain’s Jack Laugher and Daniel Goodfellow taking silver and Mexico’s Yahel Castillo and Juan Manuel Hernandez the bronze.
All 13 diving events count as qualifiers for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. -- AFP