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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, November 21, 2001

Final Two Golds End China's National Games Diving Competition

The final two gold medals produced Monday night ended the nine-day diving competition at China's national games.


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The final two gold medals produced Monday night ended the nine-day diving competition at China's national games.

An injury suffered by Guangdong woman diver Li Rongjuan during the synchronized three-meter springboard final marred an expectedly perfect closure of the battle for the 12 gold medals for the springboard and platform events.

Li and her partner Wu Shunqun had led the final field for the first four dives. But she had the back of her head rapped by the front edge of the springboard and injured when she was executing the fifth and final dive.

She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors found no serious injuries but advised her to stay hospitalized for further observation.

The mistake cost the Guangdong divers a seemingly certain gold medal. They got only 27.90 points for the failed dive and a fifth-placed total of 282.90.

An chasing duet from the Chinese Army, Zhang Ziye and Zhang Jing was thus awarded an unexpected title, with 321.48, followed by Sichuan's Fang Min and Hou Yuanyuan with 311.70 and Jiangsu's Ma Qianli and Zhang Lei on 301.20. "We have to say we are lucky this time. We were almost depressed to give up the will to win. At the final round they madea big mistake to give us a chance to lead the event." said the PLAduet after the victory.

Men's synchronized platform event was one of the most competitive one.

Sichuan divers He Wei and Li Chengwei finally won the gold medal with 375.60 points by stability and difficulty,followed by Shanxi greend-hands Chang Jing and Wang Liang and Luo Yutong and Hu Jia from Guangdong, on 358.65 and 352.20, respectively.

"All the finalists of the event were hard to beat. Almost all of them performed well and we had to win mainly through our ,ore difficult dives. What is more, we did not make any big mistakes tonight," said Hei Wei.

In the past a few days hosts Guangdong got three gold medals, which proved them a powerhouse in China in term of their average strength. Guo Jingjing, the 19-year-old who won the gold medal in Fukuoka's championships this July, clinched victory of both women's one-meter and three-meter diving springboard events this time. Her superb performance added two more golds to her native Hebei Province.

Beijing's Li Na, the Olympic champion who took two gold medals on platform events in Sydney last year, remained her dominance on ten-meter platform. The Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang proved himself top status on men's platform by the perfect performance and earned one more gold for the central Chinese province Shanxi. Above three champions are deemed to be the successor for Chinese national teams in future. "According to their performance,they have been qualified to lead the China's diving national team to the next Olympics," said Zhou Jihong, the director of national games.

Wang Feng, the Shandong diver who won the one-meter springboardat the Fukuoka World Diving Championships, continued his lead on men's one-meter springboard. The title of Men's synchronized three-meter springboard was caught by Shanghai's diver Wang Tianling and Song Dinghui. Wang, the runner-up at Fukuoka World Championships, also won the one-meter springboard title in the 8th Chinese National Games in 1997. Triple Olympic gold medalist Xiong Ni announced his retirement after winning the men's three-meter springboard event. Dominating the springboard for several years Xiong ended his nearly 20 years diving career with a fairly nice full stop and added one more gold to his Hunan province. "I am happy to end my career by winning a gold from National Games." said the 27-year-old veteran. "I stepped to diving arena also in the national games. I won the silver medal in the sixth national games in 1986."




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