It was a truly dominant display from the Chinese, whose first dive was near perfect, with a second similar effort seeing them lead from the start.

They never looked like relinquishing the lead and finished off with the best dive of the evening to clinch the gold.

Cao refused to get carried away and put the victory down to "a combination of hard work and good luck".

Looking forward to London 2012, he said: "Our team aim to fight for the gold medal....we haven't even thought about what happens if we don't get gold."

"We hope we win gold at the Olympics – we absolutely have to," added Zhang.

Garcia and Sanchez were also impressive tonight and a brilliant final dive ensured they came second in what was a tight battle for second and third.

Germany took third place, with Patrick Hausding and Sascha Klein three points behind the Mexicans.


The United States' David Boudia and Nick McCrory (both pictured above) were a further 13 off the Germans in the end as a solid, but unspectacular, fourth dive meant they missed out on the medal that they had looked likely to pick up for much of the evening.

They did, however, ensure that the USA qualified for the Olympics with their efforts.

Jeinkler Aguirre and Jose Guerra of Cuba were fifth and Russian duo Illya Zakharov and Victor Minibaev were sixth, leaving British pair Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield (both pictured below) down in seventh.

The duo could not capitalise on the home support despite having been in the medal places after the third round.

"The first two optional dives – the hard two we did really well," said Daley in the mix zone afterwards.

"It was just one dive we missed and that's what happens with a sport like diving.

"It was one dive which was a difference between getting a medal and not."


Defending himself against recent comments made by his coach, Alexei Evangulov, that he does too much media work, Daley said: "I've been putting in all the hours I can.

"It's one of those things – it's what happens on the day.

"We didn't miss a dive because Tom has been doing too much media, we missed a dive because we've had setbacks with injury earlier this year," added Waterfield.

The one man who disagreed with them, was perhaps the most important – Evangulov – who repeated his claims that Daley's media work gets in the way of success.

"It reminds me of the situation in Russia with [tennis ace Anna] Kournikova," he said.

"She looked pretty and made a promising start to her career, but the media exposure meant she never got to be the best.

"I am angry because nobody will listen to me.

"If he stopped all his media work now, I might be able to get him up to the third best diver.

"I don't mind what he does if he gets the medal.

"He can become a rock star."

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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