Source: Xinhua

08-10-2008 20:48

BEIJING, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese always says: well begun is half done.

Now their aim of making a gold sweep of the Olympic diving competition has a splendid start, as the "diving queen" Guo Jingjing claimed the gold of the women's three-meter springboard synchronized with her compatriot Wu Minxia here on Sunday, the opening day of the diving event.

"Diving queen" Guo and diving veteran Wu in competition

With the "diving queen" Guo and diving veteran Wu, the first diving gold is like a cake for China. The Athens Olympics champion pair led all the way to retain their title in 343.50 points, beating their closet rivals Julia Pakhalina/Anastasia Pozdnyakova of Russia, who posted 323.61, by almost 20 points.

Ditte Kotzian and Heike Fischer of Germany took the bronze at 318.90.

"I feel so happy to win a gold at home," said Guo, winner of the 3m springboard in 2004 Athens Olympics. "But it's not easy to get the gold medal. We did a lot of preparations. We did not focus on the goal, but to do our best on every dive, so we can treat it normally and don't have too much pressure."

"The competition is not easy," Guo said. "There are many challenges from other competitors. They have good synchronization and high quality of dives."

Because of the high level of the Chinese duo's performances, it seems that they won quite easily.