Rio de Janeiro: China’s Wu Minxia splashed into the Olympic record books on Sunday, passing legends like American Greg Louganis and her “big sister”, compatriot Guo Jingjing, to become the first person with five diving gold medals.
Wu reached the landmark through a no-doubt victory in the women’s synchronised 3m springboard along with dive partner Shi Tingmao at the Rio Games.
The win establishes Wu as one of the great all-time Olympians and broke other barriers as well.
Wu passed Guo to become the first man or woman with seven diving medals in total, and she is now the only person to win the 3m event in four successive Games.
At the age of 30, she also became the oldest women’s diving gold medallist.
The win kicked off the Olympic diving competition as well as China’s hopes of a sweep of all eight men’s and women’s events.
The victory could help Wu emerge from the shadow of her former dive partner Guo, the Chinese diving diva who dominated the sport in Games past.
Previously, only Guo and fellow compatriots Fu Mingxia and Chen Ruolin, along with Louganis and Patricia McCormick of the USA, had attained four diving golds.
Chen could catch Wu on five golds later in Rio when she competes in the 10m synchronised event.
Wu, however, won’t be able to add to her tally as her participation in Rio started and ended with the 3m synchronised springboard.
Wu won the event in 2004 and 2008 with Guo, and in 2012 with He Zi. Wu’s other gold came in the 2012 3m individual springboard.
Wu and Shi leapt to the top of the leaderboard from round one and never let up, locking it away in the last two rounds with exquisitely synchronised dives that had the judges fawning.
Their final tally of 345.60 points was 31.77 more than Italian silver medallists Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallape. Maddison Keeney and Anabelle Smith of Australia took bronze.
