China sweeps diving gold medals at Paris Olympics, edging out the U.S. for the highest spot

Cao Yuan defended his title within the males’s 10-meter platform on Saturday and gave his nation an unprecedented sweep of the diving gold medals on the Paris Olympics.

The Big Red Machine received all eight golds handed out on the Olympic Aquatics Centre, most of them with dominating victories.

That wasn’t the case within the last diving occasion of the Games. With teammate Yang Hao having an uncharacteristically poor day and Rikuto Tamai of Japan maintaining the stress on till a botched dive within the next-to-last spherical, the burden of finishing the Chinese sweep fell solely on Cao’s slender shoulders.

He was as much as the duty.

The 29-year-old Cao primarily locked up the gold with massive scores on his hardest dive of the competitors, a ahead 4 1/2 somersaults within the fifth of six rounds. He completed with 547.50 factors to turn into the primary male diver since Greg Louganis in 1988 to win a second straight gold off the massive tower.

“I consider in myself,” Cao stated by means of an interpreter. “I’m very, very assured.”

Cao now has 4 golds in his profession, tying Louganis for probably the most ever by a male Olympic diver. The Chinese star additionally received the springboard at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a 10-meter synchro gold at London in 2012.

In an applicable twist, Louganis was readily available to open the competitors by pounding a tall, picket workers 3 times on the deck – the ritual referred to as “les trois coups” that ties the Olympics to Paris’ theatrical heritage.

Cao stated it was an honor to be talked about alongside diving greats equivalent to Louganis and Wu Minxia, the Chinese girls’s star who received 5 golds over 4 straight Olympics from 2004-16.

“I respect my efforts and my coaching,” Cao stated. “I’m very pleased with this.”

Tamai bounced again on his last dive to lock up the silver with 507.65 – the primary diving medal ever for Japan. The bronze went to Noah Williams of Britain at 497.35.

“Of course, I used to be nervous,” Tamai stated. “The subsequent Games, I wish to get the gold.”

Cao and Yang had been 1-2 within the morning semifinals, and the latter already had captured a gold at these Games when he teamed with Lian Junjie to win the platform synchro title.

But Yang completely fell aside after an enormous splash within the second spherical and completed final within the 12-man last. So it was left to Cao to make sure China turned the primary nation to say each gold because the diving program was expanded from 4 to eight occasions on the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Three occasions China has received seven of eight golds, together with on the final two Summer Games, however by no means all eight.

Until now.

“If you ask anyone, they know China is one of the best,” Williams stated. “To lastly get a clear sweep and win eight gold medals, in my eyes, that is what they deserve at each Olympics.”

The final sweep of any type was the United States taking all 4 golds at Helsinki in 1952.

Tamai truly grabbed a slim lead over Cao along with his second dive – solely the second time in all the meet {that a} China diver or synchro crew was not atop the leaderboard on the finish of a spherical.

Cao edged again forward within the third spherical and was nonetheless on prime by a mere 2.75 factors after the fourth set of dives. But Tamai badly over-rotated his subsequent dive – truly one in every of his best in a really robust record – and an enormous splatter of water shot up from the pool as he disappeared beneath the floor.

A groan went up from the group. Tamai’s gold medal hopes had been primarily over after he acquired marks of starting from 3.5 to 4.0.

The U.S. as soon as dominated the diving occasions, however China started its rise to prominence with its first gold in 1984 at Los Angeles. Beginning in 2000, the Asian powerhouse has captured an astonishing 46 of 56 gold medals in diving.

With groups restricted to 2 divers within the particular person occasions, China claimed gold and silver in girls’s platform and males’s springboard. Before Yang’s dismal efficiency, the one slipup, so to talk, was Chang Yani settling for a bronze behind Maddison Keeney of Australia in girls’s springboard.

China completed with 11 medals total, one shy of its record-tying complete on the Tokyo Games. The solely different nation to win a dozen diving medals at a single Games was the U.S. in 1932, when American athletes made up the majority of the sphere and swept the rostrum in all 4 occasions at Los Angeles.

The Americans completed these Games with solely a single medal, a silver received by Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook in girls’s synchronized 3-meter. It was their worst Olympic efficiency since they had been shut out of the medals on the 2008 Beijing Games.

Over the final three Olympics, the U.S. claimed a complete of 10 medals.