Cao Yuan defended his title within the males’s 10-meter platform on Saturday and gave his nation an unprecedented sweep of the diving gold medals on the Paris Olympics.
The Huge Purple Machine received all eight golds handed out on the Olympic Aquatics Centre, most of them with dominating victories.
That wasn’t the case within the closing diving occasion of the Video games. With teammate Yang Hao having an uncharacteristically poor day and Rikuto Tamai of Japan maintaining the stress on till a botched dive within the next-to-last spherical, the burden of finishing the Chinese language sweep fell totally on Cao’s slender shoulders.
He was as much as the duty.
The 29-year-old Cao basically locked up the gold with large scores on his hardest dive of the competitors, a ahead 4 1/2 somersaults within the fifth of six rounds. He completed with 547.50 factors to turn out to be the primary male diver since Greg Louganis in 1988 to win a second straight gold off the massive tower.
“I believe in myself,” Cao mentioned via an interpreter. “I am very, very confident.”
Cao now has 4 golds in his profession, tying Louganis for essentially the most ever by a male Olympic diver. The Chinese language star additionally received the springboard at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a 10-meter synchro gold at London in 2012.
In an acceptable twist, Louganis was available to open the competitors by pounding a tall, wood employees 3 times on the deck – the ritual generally known as “les trois coups” that ties the Olympics to Paris’ theatrical heritage.
Cao mentioned it was an honor to be talked about alongside diving greats akin to Louganis and Wu Minxia, the Chinese language girls’s star who received 5 golds over 4 straight Olympics from 2004-16.
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“I appreciate my efforts and my training,” Cao mentioned. “I’m very proud of this.”
Tamai bounced again on his closing dive to lock up the silver with 507.65 – the primary diving medal ever for Japan. The bronze went to Noah Williams of Britain at 497.35.
“Of course, I was nervous,” Tamai mentioned. “The next Games, I want to get the gold.”
Cao and Yang have been 1-2 within the morning semifinals, and the latter already had captured a gold at these Video games when he teamed with Lian Junjie to win the platform synchro title.
However Yang completely fell aside after an enormous splash within the second spherical and completed final within the 12-man closing. So it was left to Cao to make sure China grew to become the primary nation to say each gold because the diving program was expanded from 4 to eight occasions on the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
3 times China has received seven of eight golds, together with on the final two Summer season Video games, however by no means all eight.
Till now.
“If you ask anybody, they know China is the best,” Williams mentioned. “To finally get a clean sweep and win eight gold medals, in my eyes, that’s what they deserve at every Olympics.”
The final sweep of any form was america taking all 4 golds at Helsinki in 1952.
Tamai really grabbed a slim lead over Cao together with his second dive – solely the second time in the complete meet {that a} China diver or synchro crew was not atop the leaderboard on the finish of a spherical.
Cao edged again forward within the third spherical and was nonetheless on prime by a mere 2.75 factors after the fourth set of dives. However Tamai badly over-rotated his subsequent dive – really considered one of his best in a really robust record – and an enormous splatter of water shot up from the pool as he disappeared below the floor.
A groan went up from the group. Tamai’s gold medal hopes have been basically over after he acquired marks of starting from 3.5 to 4.0.
The U.S. as soon as dominated the diving occasions, however China started its rise to prominence with its first gold in 1984 at Los Angeles. Starting in 2000, the Asian powerhouse has captured an astonishing 46 of 56 gold medals in diving.
STEFAN WERMUTH/POOL/AFP through Getty Pictures
With groups restricted to 2 divers within the particular person occasions, China claimed gold and silver in girls’s platform and males’s springboard. Earlier than Yang’s dismal efficiency, the one slipup, so to talk, was Chang Yani settling for a bronze behind Maddison Keeney of Australia in girls’s springboard.
China completed with 11 medals general, one shy of its record-tying whole on the Tokyo Video games. The one different nation to win a dozen diving medals at a single Video games was the U.S. in 1932, when American athletes made up the majority of the sector and swept the rostrum in all 4 occasions at Los Angeles.
The Individuals completed these Video games with solely a single medal, a silver received by Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Prepare dinner in girls’s synchronized 3-meter. It was their worst Olympic efficiency since they have been shut out of the medals on the 2008 Beijing Video games.
Over the past three Olympics, the U.S. claimed a complete of 10 medals.
