SAINT-DENIS – Cao Yuan defended his title in the men’s 10-meter platform on Saturday and gave China an unprecedented sweep of the diving gold medals at the Paris Olympics.
The Big Red Machine won all eight golds at the Olympic Aquatics Centre, most of them with dominating victories.
That wasn’t the case in the final diving event of the Games. With teammate Yang Hao having an uncharacteristically poor day and Rikuto Tamai of Japan keeping the pressure on until a botched dive in the next-to-last round, the burden of completing the sweep fell entirely on Cao’s slender shoulders.
He was up the task.
The 29-year-old Cao essentially locked up the gold with big scores on his toughest dive of the competition, a forward 4 1/2 somersaults in the fifth of six rounds. He finished with 547.50 points to become the first male diver since Greg Louganis in 1988 to win a second straight gold off the big tower.
Cao now has four golds in his career. He also won the springboard at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a 10-meter synchro gold at London in 2012.
Tamai bounced back on his final dive to lock up the silver with 507.65. The bronze went to Noah Williams of Britain at 497.35.
Yang already had captured a gold at these Games, teaming with Lian Junjie to win the platform synchro title during opening week at the diving pool.
Cao and Yang were 1-2 in the morning semifinals, but Yang totally fell apart after a big splash in the second round. He had only one stellar dive the rest of the way, finishing last in the 12-man final.
But Cao made sure China stayed on top of the medal podium, making his nation the first to claim all eight golds since the diving program was expanded from four to eight events at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Three times China has won seven of eight golds, but never all eight.
Until Saturday.
The last sweep of any kind was the United States taking all four golds at Helsinki in 1952.
Tamai actually grabbed a slender lead over Cao with his second dive — only the second time in the entire meet that a China diver or synchro team was not atop the leaderboard at the end of a round.
Cao edged back ahead in the third round and was still on top by a mere 2.75 points after the fourth set of dives. But Tamai badly over-rotated his next dive — actually one of his easiest in a very tough list — and a big splatter of water shot up from the pool as he disappeared under the surface.
A groan went up from the crowd. Tamai’s gold medal hopes were essentially over after he received marks of ranging from 3.5 to 4.0.
The U.S. once dominated the diving events, but China began its rise to prominence with its first gold in 1984 at Los Angeles. Beginning in 2000, the Asian powerhouse has captured an astonishing 46 of 56 gold medals in diving.
With teams limited to two divers in the individual events, China claimed gold and silver in women’s platform and men’s springboard. Before Yang’s dismal performance, the only slipup was Chang Yani settling for a bronze behind Maddison Keeney of Australia in women’s springboard.
China finished with 11 medals overall, one shy of its record-tying total at the Tokyo Games. The only other nation to win a dozen diving medals at a single Games was the U.S. in 1932, when the Americans swept the podium in all four events at Los Angeles.
The Americans finished these Games with only a single medal, the silver won by Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook in women’s synchronized 3-meter. It was their worst Olympic performance since they were shut out of the medals at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Over the last three Olympics, the U.S. claimed a total of 10 medals.
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