China was cruising to its fifth gold medal in five events this weekend until everything went sideways in the last half of the final event on Saturday: the men’s individual 3m springboard.

Three-time world champion Wang Zongyuan, 23, was leading after two dives but splashed down in the third round and earned only 40.95 points for the hardest dive on his list (a triple-twisting forward 2½ with 3.9 DD). His next two dives were also off, scoring 63 and 68.40 points, and he finished fifth overall.

China’s Zheng Jiuyuan had a chance to save China’s streak when he took the lead in the penultimate round, then botched his final dive – the same one that plagued Wang – to earn 48.75 points and claim the bronze. Nobody predicted the winner would be Jordan Houlden of Great Britain – least of all, himself.

“I did not expect this,” Houlden admitted. “I thought I'd place around like fourth to eighth, nothing too extravagant. When the two Chinese messed up a little bit, it definitely pushed me. It also gave me some shakes as well.”  

Notably, Carson Tyler of the US took the silver – his second silver medal of the day.

Earlier, Chen Yiwen and Chang Yani, easily won the first gold of the day for China in women’s 3m synchro. Zhu Zifeng and Cheng Zilong followed suit in men’s 10m synchro, leading every round. In the women’s 10m, triple world champion Chen Yuxi overtook her teammate Quan Hongchan in round four to win her second consecutive World Cup and bump Quan, the two-time Olympic gold medalist, into second place as Great Britain’s Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix took bronze.

For details and athlete quotes, read on.

Men’s 3m

China’s upset in the men’s 3m event was not the only surprise. First, the silver medalist from the first World Cup stop (Juan Manuel Celaya Hernandez of Mexico) was eliminated in prelims. In the final, his teammate and Olympic synchro partner, Osmar Olvera Ibarra, had trouble all day and finished 11^th of the 12 divers. Another star, Jack Laugher of Great Britain (a two-time Olympic medalist in 3m) hovered in 10^th to 12^th place until his final dive put him into sixth. The otherwise-dominant Wang Zongyuan proved to be human, placing fifth.

Instead, Wang’s teammate Zheng Jiuyuan, beat him for the first time in his life to take the bronze. Jordan Houlden of Great Britain ended up with gold.  And the versatile American Carson Tyler, who had already captured silver in 10m synchro with Joshua Hedberg, stuck his entries to earn second silver in Windsor.  Even so, Tyler might not be at the Super Final in China because the US qualifier for the 2025 Singapore World Aquatics Championships is only a few days later.

After the medal ceremony, Houlden said the key to his victory was his final dive.

"To do it under those circumstances is quite hard, and I gone and done it! I'm blown away by myself!”

Silver medalist Tyler said he didn’t think competing in two finals on Saturday impacted his individual performance either way. “I re-set pretty well after my first final. I took a nap at the pool,” adding that with one dive to go, “my heart was definitely racing. I just breathed through it and trusted my training. I knew I needed a good hurdle on my last dive. So that's where I put my focus and just trusted my cues.”

Bronze medalist Zheng knew the standings had gone haywire during the competition. “I took a look,” he said. To pull himself back into contention during the last few dives, he said “I told myself to continue with my training methods and not deviate from that. Just execute as if it was practice.”

Women’s 3m Synchro

The day began with women’s 3m synchro, in which China’s Olympic gold medalists and triple world champions Chang Yani, 23, and Chen Yiwen, 25, led each of the five rounds to claim back-to-back World Cup gold medals. While they were the only duo to clear 300 points on Saturday, their winning total was almost 11 points lower than their victory in Guadalajara last week.

Chen said “after these two World Cups, we learned what we both need to work hard on in the next 10 days or so. It’s a short time, but we're gonna try to do better in in the final.”

Chang and Chen had no pressure at this event given their undisputed dominance. Either way, Chen said, “No matter how big or small the competition, I always give it my 100%. I always bring everything I have every single day, every single competition.” She said she could hear the fans cheering while she was on the board. “They serve as a motivation for me to continue to work harder for the future and always bring my A game to everything that I do.”

Canada’s new 3m synchro team of Amelie-Laura Jasmin and Sonya Palkhivala took the first medal for the home team: a silver.

Palkhivala said she and Jasmin work well together partly because “we're the same height, we have similar entry lines, and both have really long legs so it looks pretty going into the water. We're just getting to know each other and it's already working out really great, so I think there's way more to come.”

Attentive fans may remember that Palkhivala was the 2022 junior world champion in both 3m and 3m synchro, but she soon went missing due to training accident in August 2023. She hyperextended her right knee on a hurdle and tore three out of four ligaments. Surgery and rehab took a year and a half. As a result, the Windsor World Cup was her third competition since then – “the biggest since I’ve been back and the biggest of my career so far.”

Australia’s Maddison Keeney and Alysha Koloi took the bronze with 275.40 points. At 28, Keeney said she stayed motivated because “I can still get even better so it makes me want to try harder – even though I've probably achieved all my goals.”

Men’s 10m Synchro

In men’s 10m synchro, China’s Zhu Zifeng, 22, and Cheng Zilong, 19, won back-to-back World Cup gold like their countrywomen had done earlier. Also, like Chang and Chen, the men didn’t score as high in Windsor as they had in Guadalajara. Cheng attributed their 12-point drop since last week “primarily to the small details”, like his takeoff on the third dive, an inward 3½ with 3.2 DD. “It was not timed correctly, which resulted in not opening up at the right time. I'm gonna continue to work hard on those small details.”

Meanwhile, his partner Zhu gave the jaw-dropping quote of the day. Zhu, a two-time world champion in 3m springboard synchro, said his shift to 10m platform synchro was really just a return to his main event, and said that his years doing 3m synchro was “only just to pass time.”

“The 3m springboard would be something that I might consider in the future," Zhu said.

Joshua Hedberg and Carson Tyler of the US claimed the silver medal 49.35 points behind China. Despite being in seventh and eighth place (of the nine teams) in the first two rounds, the turning point was their fourth and most difficult dive, a forward 4½, with 3.7 DD. 

“Both of us were on our heads and on vertical,” Hedberg said. “Happy about that.”

A week ago at the Guadalajara World Cup, Hedberg dove with a different partner because Tyler was busy winning individual 3m and 10m titles at the national collegiate (NCAA) championships for Indiana University.

Canada earned the bronze, its second medal of the day, thanks to Benjamin Tessier, 20, and Matt Cullen, 19. Although they grew up diving together near Montreal since they were 6, they only teamed up for synchro in 2022.

Women’s 10m

Through the first three rounds of the women’s individual 3m final, two-time Olympic gold medalist Quan Hongchan kept increasing her lead over three-time world champion Chen Yuxi. But Chen suddenly upped her game in the penultimate round and scored 92.40 points on a back 3½. Quan followed with an uncharacteristically splashy version of the same dive and, suddenly, Chen was ahead by 10 points.

On their identical final dives, they earned the same scores so the podium from Guadalajara repeated. It was Chen, Quan, and Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix finishing 1-2-3.

After accepting the gold medal, Chen said, “It’s rare to do so exceptional on the fourth dive. In my previous dives here, I encountered some errors. But yeah, the fourth dive was definitely not ordinary for me.”

Silver medalist Quan said of her World Cup season, “across these two competitions so far, I feel I’ve done really-really well. Today was also a great experience.”

Bronze medalist Spendolini-Sirieix said that since the Paris Olympics, she’s added a new twist to her schedule. She began studying journalism at a university in London.

“I've been really enjoying the balance between the two,” she said,” but recently, in training, I've been struggling a lot with mental blocks, so being able to get through two weeks of training and competition with quite high level of stress has been, you know, by the grace of God. It's been quite tough, but I'm really happy to have been able to show some good level.”

Sunday: World Cup 2 in Windsor will conclude on Sunday with another blast of action. First: men’s 3m synch followed by women’s 10m synchro. After that, it’s women’s 3m springboard featuring the Paris Olympic gold medalist Chen Yiwen of China. The event will close with the men’s 10m platform finale featuring Japan’s teenage Olympic silver medalist Rikuto Tamai and 2023 world champion Cassiel Rousseau of Australia who has been sporting a new clean-cut look.