Platform, Women

Malaysia’s Pandelela Rinong was appearing in her fourth Olympics and was hoping to add to the historic gold medal she won as Malaysia’s first World Cup winner, at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre earlier in 2021. She already had a bronze from 2012 and silver from 2016 Olympics, and was hoping for gold in Tokyo, but had to beat some extremely good divers if she was to achieve that aim. China’s Chen Yuxi, the 2019 platform world champion, was favorite for Tokyo gold, with her team-mate Quan Hongchan also a medal probability.

The two Chinese divers did dominate the preliminary round, with Chen leading all the way, beating Quan by more than 26 points, with 2019 world champion bronze medallist Delaney Schnell of the United States in third. The 2008 Beijing synchronised platform silver medallist Melissa Wu of Australia qualified in fourth place, with Canada’s 2016 Rio bronze medallist Meaghan Benfeito in fifth. Rinong just managed to qualify in 18th place after being out of the qualifying positions with one dive remaining.

Quan and Chen dominated yet again in the semi-finals, with the third best qualifier, Schnell, 65 points behind second placed Chen. It was no different in the final as 14-year-old Quan led after every dive with Chen in the silver medal position after each dive. Chen performed one magnificent dive after another and received 24 out of a possible 35 maximum 10s, including the maximum score from all seven judges on dives two and four. Quan won by more than 40 points while Chen was 54 points in front of Australia’s Melissa Wu, who had held the bronze medal position from the third dive onwards.

China won their fourth consecutive individual platform gold medal and ended the women’s diving competition by winning all the four gold medals and two silver medals available it was possible to win. Of the 24 women’s diving gold medals that had been on offer since 2004 when the synchronized events were introduced, China has won 21 of them.