China Overtakes Australia in World Swimming Championships Medal Table

Chinese Divers Win Gold Medals in World Swimming Championships

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From the victories of their divers, China overtook the second place of the medal table at the 9th FINA world swimming championships Thursday in Fukuoka.

China's Olympic silver-medalist Guo Jingjing and championships debutee Wu Minxia won the women's three meters springboard synchronized diving title and their male teammates and Olympic champions Tian Liang and Hu Jia were triumphant in the men's platform synchronized diving final.

The FINA Jury of Appeal brought a dispute-marred women's 4x100 meters freestyle relay final Wednesday evening back to the right track, as it decided to uphold the disqualification of the United States and Australian teams, the top two finishers in the race, due to a violation of competition rules.

Federations of Britain, Australia and hosts Japan all lodged protest on Wednesday, on the results of the race. The Americans accepted the ruling of their disqualification for jumping the relay race at the take-off, although they later complained about the effectiveness and accuracy of the timing system.


Chinese Divers Win Gold Medals at World Swimming Championships

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As a result of the disqualification, Britain, Germany and hosts Japan came out the top three of the relay final.

When actions concluded for Thursday, Russia, China and Australia tied with an identical number of six gold medals. But the Russians had more medals of other colors -- seven silvers and two bronzes for a medal total of 15, followed by China with four silvers and two bronzes to tally at 12 and Australians with three silvers and five bronzes for a medal total of 14.

The United States were now ranked fourth, with a medal credit of 5-6-5.

Sweden were included onto the medal table on Thursday, with one medal of each color from swimming competitions and Austria won the first medal here, a silver from men's 200m breaststroke swimming final.

The competitions program put a total of eight gold medals on off for Friday -- six for swimming, one for diving and one for women's water polo.

The championships close on Sunday.