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Canadian Despatie wins 3-meter title, He Chong earns bronze
Alexandre Despatie gave Canada another gold medal to celebrate at the World Swimming Championships. Despatie won the 3-meter springboard title Tuesday night in front of his flag-waving hometown fans.
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 medalist 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 1-meter title 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 Sunday in synchronized diving, and a silver in women's 1-meter Monday. It was Dumais' second medal of the meet, having shared a bronze in 3-meter synchronized 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 has a bronze. The United States has three silvers and a bronze. Last summer, Peng Bo held off Despatie to win the 3-meter title at the Athens Games. But Peng finished fourth Tuesday. Dubroskok ended up fifth. Despatie was the 2003 world champion on the 10-meter platform, but a back injury kept him from training and he won't defend that title this week. Diving, water polo and synchronized swimming were delayed at least 20 minutes 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, the United States was upset 9-8 by Hungary. Brenda Villa scored twice for the defending world champion Americans, who tied Spain 6-6 in their opening match. They must beat China on Thursday to keep alive their hopes of advancing. "We had a couple of mishaps that Hungary took advantage of, but there were a lot of things to build on from this," U.S. coach Heather Moody said. Aniko Pelle had three goals for Hungary, which is 2-0 in pool play. In other matches, New Zealand defeated Uzbekistan 9-4, Spain beat China 15-3, Italy routed Cuba 13-6, Russia and Greece played to a 4-4 tie, Germany edged the Netherlands 7-6, Australia beat Brazil 11-4, and Canada defeated Venezuela 12-2. In synchronized swimming, defending world champion Virginie Dedieu of France was the leading qualifier after Tuesday's technical and free solo preliminaries. Natalia Ischenko of Russia was second and Gemma Mengual of Spain was third. Meanwhile, the Canadian synchronized swimming team lost its appeal Tuesday of a referee's ruling that it deliberately used the bottom of the pool to assist another swimmer during the team technical routine. The Canadians were penalized two points 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.
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