BARCELONA, Spain, 14 July 2003 — Russian legend Dmitry Sautin lived up to his title as King of Diving here yesterday when he teamed up with Alexander Dobroskok to win the men’s 3m synchronized springboard gold on the opening day of the world swimming championships.
Winning a fifth world title aged 29 was quite an achievement for the man from Moscow whose struggle with injury over the years have led to many to write off his career more than once. Sautin, who has won titles in all forms of diving over worlds and Olympics, once again proved he was master of all he surveyed in the Montjuic pool overlooking the Catalan capital.
The Russian duo, who had led the morning’s preliminaries, scored a combined 369.18 points after five jumps to push Chinese favorites Wang Tianling and Wang Feng into silver position with 343.29.
Germany’s Andreas Wels and Tobias Schellenberg took bronze with 334.44.
The Russians scored a string of maximum ten points during the finals to largely dominate the Chinese, who achieved one, and showed the effects of having missed vital competition because of the outbreak of the SARS virus in Asia.
Sautin’s most recent mishap was surgery this spring on a recurring left knee problem, and he admitted his return to form had been mainly due to the Chinese absence from a number of events including the Grand Prix Super final in Mexico last month because of SARS. Sautin will be defending his 3m springboard title here, and said that he would also be trying to return to the tougher platform discipline early next year after dropping it this year because of his injuries. The Chinese pair, meanwhile, said that they had just been happy to be able to travel to the world championships after being sidelined for so many months.
“We didn’t think about the color of the medals, just to come here and give the best of ourselves,” said Wang Tianling. There was better news, however, for their women’s team with Lao Lishi, 15, and Li Ting, 16, winning the 10m synchronized platform gold.
The teenage pair scored 344.58 points to beat Australia’s Loudy Tourky and Lynda Dackiw, who took silver with 323.24 points, with Russia’s Yevgenya Olshevskaya and Svetlana Timoshinina taking bronze.
The first medals of the championships were in the long distance events along the Barcelona sea front with Russia’s Yevgeny Kochkarov winning the men’s 5km open water title, and Italy’s Viola Valli defending her women’s title.
In the synchronized swimming, France’s Virginie Dedieu surprised her Russian and Japanese challengers to move closer to her first world title by leading the solo technical program. Dedieu, twice runner-up in 1998 and 2001, scored 98.667 points to put her ahead of Russian Anastasia Yermakova, on 96.500, with Japan’s Miya Tachibana having to be content to share third with Spanish hope Gemma Mengual on 96.333.
Competition continues today with the women’s one meter springboard event, men’s water polo preliminaries, and synchronized swimming team technical and solo free preliminaries
