Rio 2016 Olympic Games
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Maria Lenk Aquatic Center
- Diving: Sunday, August 7 – Saturday, August 20, 2016
- Live stream schedule & links
- Schedule & Results
China continues to dominate the diving boards at the Rio Olympics, with Cao Yuan winning the nation’s 5th medal in just 6 events.
Cao qualified first out of prelims, semifinals and held his spot in the final, scoring 547.60 points to run away with gold on the 3-meter springboard. That bested Great Britain’s Jack Laugher (523.85) by a good 24 points.
Cao broke 90 on four of his six dives, scoring a huge 96.90 on his final dive. The very last dive of the entire session was a forward 4 1/2 that Cao nailed for 8.5s and 9s.
At the other end of the dive order was Laugher, who opened the event and actually matched Cao with a 96.90-point forward 4 1/2 of his own. Laugher did it in round 5.
The best single dive of the session came from bronze medalist Patrick Hausding, who scored 98.80 on his own forward 4 1/2. That came in round 5 as well, but was too little, too late to catch the top two. It did settle him firmly into bronze, though, outscoring the rest of the field (not counting Cao and Laugher) by 14+ points that round.
Russia’s Evgenii Kuznetsov and American Kristian Ipsen were the first two out of the medals. Defending champ Ilia Zahkarov of Russia – who hit the board on his opening dive in prelims and barely snuck into finals – failed his round 4 dive in the semifinals and missed the cut for the medal final.
Not surprising China is good at diving.