Chinese Divers, Thorpe's Record Highlight Day 7 at Swimming WorldsThe fairly young divers won China's first two gold medals and Australia's star swimmer Ian Thorpe created the first world record as actions unfolded for the two disciplines at the 9th FINA world swimming championships here on Sunday.China's two synchronized diving duets won the first two gold medals for China at the Fukuoka event as world championships debutees Peng Bo and Wang Kenan took the men's three meters springboard synchronized diving title and their female compatriots Sang Xue and Duan Qing outscored others for the women's platform synchronized diving gold. Having trained together less than three years, Peng and Wang scored their first ever triumph in any world-class competitions, although 20-year-old Peng from the Chinese Navy had won individual springboard titles at 1998 world military swimming championships and the World Military Games one year later in Croatia. The best ever international performance for 21-year-old Wang was the one-meter springboard title at the Asian swimming championships last year in Pusan, South Korea. Australian swimmers grabbed two titles for the sports-crazy country on Sunday as Olympic champion Thorpe improved his own 400 meters freestyle world record set during the Sydney Olympic Games, with a title-winning time of three minutes and 40.17 seconds. And their relay team clocked a championships record on way to the victory in the 4x100m freestyle relay final, in 3:14.10. Yana Klochkova won Ukraine's first gold medal as she took the 400m individual medley title. At the end of the 7th day's competitions, Russia stood for the top position i the medal table, with four golds, five silver and one bronze. Italy was ranked second with three golds and as many bronze medals and Australia was ranked third with a medal credit of 2-1-1. China was fourth with 2-0-0 and Germany and hosts Japan tied for the fifth rank with an identical medal record of 1-1-2. Monday will witness six more gold medals on offer for swimming - - men's 50m freestyle, women's 200m butterfly, men's 100m backstroke, women's 100m breaststroke, women's 800m freestyle and women's 4x100m freestyle relay. Also on the program are two diving events -- women's 1m springboard and men's 3m springboard event, with the gold medal to be decided for the men's event. Preliminary competition will continue in women's water Polo on Monday. |
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