Host nation Greece won their first gold medal of the Athens Olympics when Nikolaos Siranidis and Thomas Bimis triumphed in the men’s synchronised diving 3m springboard event on Monday.
”We hope that this will open the way for more medals for Greece,” said Bimis after the unheralded pair achieved their country’s first Olympic gold as Chinese favourites Peng Bo and Wang Kenan collapsed to finish last.
The Chinese had been leading after the first four rounds but plummeted after their fifth and final dive was declared void in an eventful competition that saw a man wearing a blue tutu run on to a springboard to be escorted off.
The Greeks scored 353,34 points with German pair Andreas Wels and Tobias Schellenberg taking the silver medal with 350,01 and Robert Newbery and Steven Barnett of Australia taking the bronze in 349,59.
Olympic champions Dimitri Sautin and Alexander Dobroskok of Russia had been in contention to retain their title after sticking with the Chinese following the first two rounds.
But they finished second from bottom of the eight divers after two-time Olympic gold medallist Sautin hit his head on his third dive.
And the Greeks took advance to jump from third position going into the final round.
”Maybe the fact that the crowd were Greek effected us positively and the others negatively,” said Bimis. ”I think the Chinese and the Russians got a bit anxious and this hurt their performance.”
Siranidis said that he had also drawn on the experience of a bad road accident earlier in the year, which almost ended his sporting career.
”After that I decided to look at things from a positive perspective,” he added.
Newbery, who also got bronze in the synchro platform at the weekend, said that they were shocked by the collapse of the powerful Chinese and Russians.
”I’m a bit dumbfounded the way things panned out,” said Newbery. ”I wouldn’t have thought it would happen this way. But well done to the Greeks for getting up their on front of their home crowd and pulling it out when it was needed.”
Earlier Chinese duo Lao Lishi and Li Ting won their country’s third diving gold medal of the championship when they took the synchronised diving 10m platform title.
The 17-year-old world champions led for four of the five rounds, scoring 352,14 points, with Russia’s Natalia Goncharova and Julia Koltunova taking the silver medal with 340,92 and Blythe Hartley and Emilie Heymans of Canada bronze in 327,78. — Sapa-AFP
Special Report: Olympics 2004