Unlike the men’s 10m showdown, the first three events on Sunday were victory marches in which Chinese divers took the lead in the first round and steadily widened their gap on the field until they owned the gold medals.

To begin the day, Hu Yukang and Zheng Jiuyuan did it in men’s 3m synchro. In women’s 10m synchro, China’s Lu Wei did it with her new partner Zhang Minjie who ran a fever for six days and was unable to practice until Saturday. In the women’s individual springboard, Chen Jia and Chen Yiwen finished 1-2, ahead of bronze medalist Maddison Keeney of Australia.

Then came the intense men’s 10m contest.

Two-time Olympian Oleksii Sereda, 19, of Ukraine, led through round three but was hounded by strong diving from Japan’s Olympic silver medalist Rikuto Tamai, 2023 world champion Cassiel Rousseau of Australia, and Zhu Zifeng of China.

Cheng Zilong was behind all of them until round four when he blasted out a stunning back 3½ that earned 99.00 points (and the lone 10 in Windsor), and suddenly, Cheng ranked third, behind Zhu and Rousseau when Sereda suffered his worst dive at the worst time.

In round five, Cheng ripped a forward 4½ that not only closed a 23.3-point gap for the lead, but put him 6.30 points ahead of Zhu (his synchro partner).

So it all came down to the final dive. Cheng posted another 90-plus point dive to finish with 511.10 points. Zhu came up short on the same dive and took silver with 499.40. Rousseau was poised for third but one diver remained – Sereda of Ukraine, who needed 91.75 points to tie Rousseau for bronze. Instead, Sereda did the exact same dive as the two Chinese men and the judges gave him the same score as Cheng: 91.80 – to knock Rousseau down to fourth place by 0.05 points.

For details and athlete reactions, keep reading.

Men’s 10m      

Cheng’s victory in the men’s 10m event marked his third gold medal in three days. (He also won team gold on Friday and 10m synchro gold with Zhu on Saturday).

“For me, the medal that was the most fun was the team competition,” Cheng said. “But the gold medal that means the most to me is the individual gold, as it surpasses all my expectations.”

Zheng has been a member of the Chinese national team since May 2022, and while Sunday wasn’t the first time he’d scored more than 500 points, he had never before received a perfect score of 10 from a judge. Funny, he said, “I didn’t notice it. I wasn’t following the results during the competition. I didn’t know about it until now,” when asked in the interview.

Silver-medalist Zhu, his teammate, said that even though Cheng had outscored him in the 10m prelims, losing to his synchro partner in the final “made me sad and I will work harder in the future to pass him.”

Sereda, meanwhile, was all smiles after claiming the bronze. He didn’t know for sure when he hit the water on his last dive if he had earned enough points. “For me, it’s mentally easier not to know,” he said. “I just saw the scoreboard afterwards.” 

Going into the final, Sereda said, “I thought I’d finish about top 3. I understood it was possible. I won preliminaries, but I got less points, so the Chinese just started to dive [well] in the final.”

Asked what’s next, Sereda said, “There is no time for celebration. I need to prepare for Beijing. I need to work harder and show better results there. We go to Poland to train for 1½ or two weeks, and from there, to China.”

Men’s 3m Synchro

Nine hours before the riveting 10m final, the day began with men’s 3m synchro, where China’s Hu Yukang and Zheng Jiuyuan led all five rounds and won gold with 388.05 points despite a botched final dive (a forward 4½ with 3.8 DD) that only scored 57.00 points.

“My takeoff was timed incorrectly,” Zheng explained. “I didn’t communicate the rhythm and tempo with Hu so it caused Hu to lose his rhythm, and our entry was also timed incorrectly.”

Nonetheless, they still won gold despite being synchro partners for only two months. It was a nice birthday present for Zheng, who turned 21 on Sunday. Normally, to celebrate, Zheng said, “I eat cake. Maybe here I will buy a whole cake.”

Finishing second were the 2024 Olympic silver medalists, Juan Manuel Celaya Hernandez and Osmar Olverra Ibarra of Mexico. Both men rebounded from sub-par results in the individual 3m event to claim silver on Sunday with consistency and a high degree of difficulty. They finished only 6.33 points behind China.

They were pleased with silver. “I think we're on the right track,” Celaya Hernandez said. “We’re just trying to take every opportunity to pursue the highest step on the podium.”

Overnight, Olvera said he was able to recover from Saturday’s 11^th place finish in 3m by thinking “Okay, the day is over, start over, just focus on the synchro dives, relax, enjoy,” and it came out better.

For his part, Celaya Hernandez (who missed the cut for the individual 3m final) said, “I started to review my dives, what I was doing wrong.” One thing he noticed, he said, “was the rhythm of the board. I think the board's a little tilted down into the right so I was trying to focus on where and how I need to step to set myself up a little bit better.”

The surprise bronze medalists were US college seniors Jack Ryan (Stanford) and Quentin Henninger (Indiana University), whose final dive put them just 6.99 points behind Mexico and bounced France into fourth place. The American duo had only twice before competed in synchro together – including the US Olympic Trials when they were 17 and trying to qualify for the postponed Tokyo Games.

Women’s 10m Synchro   

In women’s 10m synchro, China’s Lu Wei, 19, and Zhang Minjie, 20, delivered yet another gold for China – despite Zhang’s inability to train for six days due to fever (Lu trained solo until Saturday). On Sunday, they were the only pair to clear 300 points, scoring 327.36.

Even though Lu and Zhang have only been synchro partners since November 2024, they had lots of experience. Lu began diving at age 4. Zheng started at 5. They had also won gold at the first World Cup in Guadalajara.

Mexico’s Gabriela Agundez Garcia and Alejandra Estudillo Torres placed second with 291.90 points to match their second place from the Guadalajara World Cup. They, too, were a new pair that only teamed up after the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Estudillo Torres said, “I think we have a lot of connection. We are so happy to compete together.”

But training is tough because Agundez Garcia is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, while Estudillo Torres is in Austin, Texas, where she is a freshman at the University of Texas.

In a tight race for third place, another new pair prevailed: Great Britain’s Maisie Bond and Lois Toulson took the bronze ahead of Lanie Gutch/Anna Lemkin of the US (fourth) and Katelyn Fung/Kate Miller of Canada (fifth) who were all within 1.44 points of the Brits.

Toulson said of her partnership with Bond, “We're just trying it out for the moment. Last week in Guadalajara was our first international competition; this is only our second. We get on really well, which helps a lot.”

Toulson said her usual partner, Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix, is busy with university studies and is focusing on the individual event for now, “so it was a good opportunity for me and Maisie to try a list together. We train at the same facility now, in Sheffield, England, with the same coach.”

Women’s 3m

The women’s competition wrapped with the individual 3m event, and Sunday’s podium was identical to last week’s at the first World Cup in Guadalajara.

Chen Jia, 20, led every round to win back-to-back gold with 379.05 points. Chen Yiwen earned silver, 9.15 points behind her teammate, followed by Australia’s Maddison Keeney with 336.55 points.

Chen Jia only made the Chinese national team last year, although she started diving at age 4 and made the provincial team at age 10.

Compared to Guadalajara, Chen Jia said, “the results last week were slightly better, but this week, [with only really three days’ turnaround before prelims], the competition timeline was more tight and a bit more tiring. As a result, my mental capacity wasn't as good as I wanted it.”

Chen’s teammate Chen Yiwen, 25 – whom Keeney called “the coolest cat you’ll ever meet” – took her second straight silver, 9.15 points behind Chen Jia.

The 2024 Olympic gold medalist said she was proud of both World Cup silver medals “because my training wasn’t good for a very long time after the Paris Olympics. My mental fortitude relaxed a lot and recently there hasn’t really been any motivation, so maybe that accounts for my results this week and last week.”

Even so, Chen Yiwen said her two podiums in a single week proved that “I can still push myself to this result, over 370 points for two finals. It’s way better than I thought I can do.”

Keeney of Australia, 28, finished third with 336.55 points to claim her second bronze medal of the weekend (to match her result in Saturday’s 3m synchro).

Medal tally: Eight nations claimed medals at the 2025 World Cup in Windsor: China (8 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze), Great Britain (1 gold, 2 bronze), Mexico (3 silvers), USA (2 silver, 1 bronze), Canada (1 silver, 1 bronze), Australia (2 bronze), Italy (1 bronze), Ukraine (1 bronze).

Next: From here, the divers who qualified for the 2025 World Aquatics Diving World Cup Super Final will reassemble in Beijing, China, May 2-4, to vie for a piece of the $956,000 US prize money across the nine events.