Xie Siyi won gold and his teammate Wang Zongyuan took silver on the men’s 3m springboard on Thursday, just as they had at the Tokyo 2020 Games. Osmar Olvera Ibarra captured bronze to give Mexico its first men’s 3m medal since 2000. China has now won six of six diving golds in Paris, with two events remaining.
In the men’s 3m final on Thursday Wang Zongyuan, 22, was hoping to upgrade his Tokyo 2020 silver medal. He had a more difficult dive list than his teammate, the defending Olympic champion Xie Siyi, 28, and it had helped him to rank first in prelims and the semifinal. But Wang had been a busy man. He had also contested (and won gold in) the 3m synchro event last week.
When the individual gold was on the line, Xie, the 2020 Tokyo gold medalist found himself in third place after two dives but he eventually eclipsed his teammate to take his second consecutive Olympic gold medal with 543.60 points – 13.40 ahead of Wang. Both divers scored more than 100 points for their final dives: a forward 4½.
Xie said of his victory, “I’m very excited about it. I stopped diving for two years after Tokyo.” After underperforming in the prelims and semifinal, Xie said, “I was searching why, with my coach, looking for the way to get better in a short amount of time. We analyzed the problems.”
Wang, the silver medalist said, “I had quite a big error during my performance,” referring to his fifth dive on Thursday, a back 3½ that scored 70.20 points. “There was a lot of pressure from the others. I wanted to do better. I am my biggest enemy, not the other players [but] I am still young. I want to win more. I want to be better, stronger and more handsome.”
Mexico’s Osmar Olvera Ibarra, 20, held third place for five of the six rounds, and took the bronze with 500.40 points to give Mexico its first Olympic medal in the men’s 3m event since the great Fernando Platas captured silver in 2000.
“I achieved my goal,” Olvera Ibarra said. “I wanted to achieve 500 points. I knew if I wanted a medal, I needed to get to 500 points. I think it’s possible to win gold. I just need to keep training, keep working, keep giving my all. I still have a lot to improve. Certain jumps that need to be better.”
The rest of the scoreboard shape-shifted as the rest of the field struggled with consistency. Great Britian’s Jack Laugher, 29, was aiming for his third consecutive Olympic medal on 3m, but fell to eighth place after a botched inward 3½ in the third round and never really recovered. Laugher placed seventh.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was fourth-place finisher from the US, Carson Tyler, 20, who is only diver in Paris who will be contesting both the 3m and 10m individual events.
Jordan Houlden, 26, of Great Britain finished fifth (after being in fourth place after the first and fifth rounds). Luis Uribe Bermudez, 22, of Colombia placed sixth despite an opening dive that had put him in last place. After Laugher, France’s Jules Bouyer, 22, placed eighth (but was in fourth place after rounds three and four).
NEXT: There are two more gold medals at stake in Paris: in women’s 3m on Friday, and in men’s 10m on Saturday.