David Boudia (Noblesville, Ind./West Lafayette, Ind.) and Steele Johnson (Carmel, Ind./West Lafayette, Ind.) won the bronze medal in synchronized 10-meter Thursday at the FINA Diving World Series in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Sam Dorman (Tempe, Ariz./Coral Gables, Fla.) and Kristian Ipsen (Clayton, Calif./Stanford, Calif.) were sixth in synchronized 3-meter.
The FINA Diving World Series is a four-leg, invitation-only circuit for the top finishers from the 2015 FINA World Championships.
Boudia and Johnson scored 419.88 points to pick up the bronze medal after finishing fourth at the first World Series meet in Beijing last week. China’s Chen Aisen and Lin Yue scored 466.50 to win gold for the second week in a row, and Great Britain’s Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow came away with silver with 428.91 points.
The Americans debuted a back 3 ½ pike into their list last week in Beijing but a miss on the dive kept them off the podium. A week later in Dubai, they scored 75.60 points on the dive, an improvement of 15 points from their score a week ago. They scored 80 or more points on two other dives, earning 80.64 on an inward 3 ½ tuck and 85.32 on their back 2 ½ with 2 ½ twists, as they won their first medal of the 2016 season.
Dorman and Ipsen scored 410.79 points for sixth in the men’s synchronized 3-meter final after winning bronze in Beijing last week. China took gold with 464.52 as Cao Yuan and Qin Kai topped the World Series field for the second week in a row. Ukraine’s Oleksandr Gorshkovozov and Illya Kvasha scored 435.39 points for silver, and Great Britain’s Jack Laugher and Chris Mears finished with 424.92 to edge the Russian pair of Evgenii Kuznetsov and Ilia Zakharov by less than a point for bronze.
China also won gold in Thursday’s women’s synchronized events, with He Zi and Wang Han winning women’s 3-meter synchro and Lui Huixia and Si Yajie finishing first in women’s 10-meter synchro.
World Series competition in Dubai continues with individual events on Friday and Saturday. Ipsen will dive in Friday’s individual men’s 3-meter contest, with Amy Cozad (Indianapolis, Ind./Bloomington, Ind.) diving individually in women’s 10-meter. Boudia will compete Saturday in individual men’s 10-meter.
The final two stops on the 2016 circuit are set for April 15-17 in Windsor, Ontario, and April 22-24 Kazan, Russia.
Courtesy of USA Diving.