BUDAPEST, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The diving competition of the 17th FINA World Championships concluded with Tom Daley's sensational win in the men's 10m platform here on Saturday as powerhouse China bagged home eight out of the 13 gold medals.
The 2009 world champion Daley led the final since the first round, but met strong challenge from China's Olympic champion Chen Aisen. However the "golden boy" of British diving kept both aggressive and calm, winning the title with a total score of 590.95 points.
Chen took the silver only 5.7 points behind Daley. Chen's teammate Yang Jian took the third place in 565.15 points.
Earlier, the 23-year-old Daley said he was having fun with teammate Grace Reid, as they took the silver of the mixed 3m springboard in 308.04 points.
China's Wang Han and Li Zheng won the event in 323.70 points. Jennifer Abel and Francois Imbeau-Dulac from Canada finished third in 297.72 points.
China was two golds shy of their results in Kazan two years ago, but team manager Zhou Jihong said she was quite satisfied with the performance of the young Chinese divers.
"The average age of our team is 21-year-old. Although we have four Olympic champions in the squad, but all are still quite young other than the 25-year-old Shi Tingmao."
"Our athletes still have a lot of room to improve," said Zhou. "And they need to compete in more tournaments."
Synchronized swimming also drew the curtain after holding the last two finals on Saturday.
China won their first ever gold medal in synchronized swimming at the World Championships as they took away the team free combination title.
As Russia were absent from the event, China with two silver medals from the team events from previous worlds, proved that they were the closest rivals against Russia.
China clinched the title with a comparatively high score of 96.1000 points, followed by Ukraine and Japan in 94.0000 and 93.2000 points respectively.
Late in the evening, Aleksandr Maltsev/Mikhaela Kalancha won the mixed duet free in 92.6000 points. It's the seventh gold of the Russian synchronized team in Budapest.
Italian Giorgio Minisini/Mariangela Perrupato ranked second in 91.1000 points. American veteran Bill May finished third in 88.7667 points together with his new partner Kanako Kitao Spendlove.
Russia still dominated the sport as they bagged home seven golds out of eight events that they participated in. Italian pair Giorgio Minisini and Manila Flamini managed to snatch the gold of the mixed duet technical as they edged Russian pair Aleksandr Maltsev/Mikhaela Kalancha in a margin of 0.0340 point.
The World Championships is slated to have eight-day swimming competition since Sunday.
