By James Crook

July 25 - Olympic silver medallist Thomas Lurz was a pivotal cog for the German team in the 5km open water team event at the FINA World Championships in Barcelona, as the experienced swimmer hauled his team home to take gold.

Isabelle Harle and Christian Reichert were the other two members of the team that won the gold medal, finishing with a time of 52min 54.9sec to win Germany's second gold of the Championships, and complete Lurz's trifecta of medals.

The Germans were a class apart from their rivals, as Greece took silver whilst finishing over a minute behind the eventual winners in a time of 54:03.3, led by Olympic and world 10km open water champion Spyridon Gianniotis.

Bronze went to Brazil, which completed Poliana Okimoto's set of medals from Barcelona after she took gold in the 10k open water and silver in the 5km open water earlier in the week.

"We had a good race today and our pool swimmers were here to support," said Lurz after notching up his sixth World Championship gold medal.

"I am happy that they were here to see us win.

"We knew that we were swimming fast, our coaches were signalling to us from outside that we were on a fast pace

"It really was a perfect race.

"I think our goal was maybe to win a medal, but to win the gold medal was absolutely unexpected, I was shocked."

Germany's Lurz, Reichert and Harle celebrate winning team gold in the 10km open water event

In the diving, Olympic women's 10 metre platform champion Chen Ruolin of China was overshadowed by 14-year-old team-mate Yajie Si who prevailed in a close battle against the four-time Olympic champion.

The pair went dive-for-dive at their first three efforts, recording the exact same score for all of them, before the nerves appeared to get the better of both of them, with the teenager recording her lowest score yet still taking the lead after Chen faltered.

Chen came out fighting with her final dive but it was not enough as the youngest competitor in the event took the gold medal with a score of 392.15 points and the Olympic gold medallist was forced to settle for silver with 388.70, well clear of Ukraine's European champion Iulia Prokopchuk who took bronze with a score of 358.40.

This was China's sixth gold medal win in seven diving events so far; the only event they did not secure the gold in so far is the men's 10m synchro, which was won by Germany's Sascha Klein and Patrick Hausding.

And there was no surprise in the synchronised swimming as Russia's Svetlana Romashina won gold for the fourth time at these Championships alongside Svetlana Kolesnichenko, pulling off an unorthodox Metallica-inspired routine in the duet free to win gold with ahead of 97.680, ahead of China's Jiang sisters in silver and Spaniards Ona Carbonell and Margalida Crespi who took bronze.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


Related stories
July 2013: Double Olympic champion Romashina bags hat-trick of synchro golds at World Aquatics Championships
July 2013: Defending champion unhappy as Brazil take gold and silver in women's 10km open water at FINA World Championships
July 2013: China's Chen secures fourth world 10m synchro title
July 2013: German pair upset Chinese favourites to take diving gold at World Aquatics Championships
July 2013: Anderson takes first gold of Aquatics World Championships