Alexandre Despatie gave Canada another gold medal to celebrate at the World Swimming Championships when he won the 3m springboard title on Tuesday.
The Montreal resident was cheered loudly, especially for earning two perfect marks of 10 on his third dive.
Despatie finished first with 813,60 points against a stellar field that included defending world champion Alexander Dubroskok of Russia and 2003 silver medallist Peng Bo of China.
American Troy Dumais earned the silver with 752,76 points. He Chong of China took the bronze with 730,77.
Despatie led after the preliminaries and semifinals, just as teammate Blythe Hartley did in winning the 1m title on Monday for Canada’s first gold medal.
A grinning Hartley shared a bear hug with Despatie, who blew kisses to the crowd.
The Chinese narrowly avoided being shut out for the first time in Montreal. Dubroskok badly missed his fifth dive, dropping him from third to fifth and allowing He back into medal contention.
The Chinese won two golds on Sunday in synchronized diving, and a silver in the women’s 1m on Monday.
It was Dumais’s second medal of the meet, having shared a bronze in 3m synchronised with his brother Justin, who didn’t make the individual springboard final.
Canada and China were tied atop the medals standings with two golds each. The Chinese also have a silver. Canada have a bronze. The United States have three silvers and a bronze.
Last summer, Peng held off Despatie to win the 3m title at the Athens Olympic Games, but Peng finished fourth on Tuesday. Dubroskok ended up fifth.
Despatie was the 2003 world champion on the 10m platform, but a back injury kept him from training and he won’t defend that title this week.
Diving, water polo and synchronised swimming were delayed at least 20 minutes on Tuesday morning because of driving rain that pelted the athletes and spectators, who huddled under umbrellas at the open-air venues.
In women’s water-polo preliminaries, defending champions the US were upset 9-8 by Hungary.
”We had a couple of mishaps that Hungary took advantage of, but there were a lot of things to build on from this,” US coach Heather Moody said.
Aniko Pelle had three goals for Hungary, who are 2-0 in pool play.
In other matches, New Zealand defeated Uzbekistan 9-4, Spain beat China 15-3 and Italy routed Cuba 13-6.
Meanwhile, the Canadian synchronised swimming team lost their appeal on Tuesday of a referee’s ruling that they deliberately used the bottom of the pool to assist another swimmer during the team technical routine.
The Canadians were penalised two points on Monday, costing them two spots in the standings. But they moved up to fifth after the free routine, and advanced to Saturday’s team final. — Sapa-AP