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Sautin and Xiong Head for Open Springboard Final
Defending Olympic champion Xiong Ni and world champion Dmitry Sautin set the scene for a gripping final in the men's three-metre springboard diving on Tuesday.
Xiong, who led a Chinese one-two with Yu Zhuocheng at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, topped the 12 qualifiers for the evening's final with a combined score from Monday's six preliminary round dives and Tuesday morning's five semifinal dives of 687.78 points.
But Russia's Sautin, the reigning Olympic platform champion and fifth on the three-metre springboard in Atlanta, scored the highest semifinal mark. That meant he was the leader on points going into the final, when the preliminary round totals are dropped but the semifinal tallies carried through.
Sautin, who shared victory with Igor Lukashin in the synchronised highboard event on Saturday, compiled 240.24 from his semifinal dives for an overall qualifiying total of 684.75.
Xiong, Olympic platform silver medallist behind Greg Louganis in 1988 and bronze medallist in 1992, had the fourth-highest semifinal total of 230.40 behind Sautin, Chinese team mate Xiao Hailiang (235.92) and Mexico's Fernando Platas (234.36).
American Mark Ruiz, who last year became the first man since Louganis to win all three individual titles at the U.S. spring nationals, was fourth overall qualifier behind Xiong, Sautin and Platas but fifth on semifinal scores (227.97).
Tony Ali, who became Britain's first European diving champion in 37 years when he won the three-metre springboard title in Istanbul in 1999, squeezed into the final as 12th and last qualifier among the 18 semifinalists.
His overall score was 599.61, a mere 0.99 points ahead of unlucky 13th Alexander Dobroskok of Russia. Ali's semifinal tally was 206.25, meaning the Briton would go into the final 33.99 points behind reigning world and European champion Sautin. (Source: chinadaily.com.cn)
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