Synchronized Platform, Men

All eyes were on the Chinese pair of Chen Aisen and Cao Yuan, and Britain’s Tom Daley and his new partner Matty Lee. Aisen won two gold medals at Rio while Yuan won gold at London 2012. The pair were the reigning platform synchronised world champions, while Daley and Lee came to the Games as winners of the 2021 World Cup. Barring accidents or errors, the event at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre was always likely to come down to just these two pairs, and so it was.

Aisen and Yuan were top scorers after each of the first three dives, by which time the British pair were more than 15 points adrift, but then disaster struck for the Chinese duo and they dropped 20 points on dive four as Daley and Lee took the lead by just over five points. They held that lead going into the final dive, but what a slender lead it was, as Aisen and Yuan pulled back 3.48 points to trail by just 1.74. Out of the two pairs, it was the British duo who dived first in the final round and what a time to put in their best performance, as they recorded 101.01 after a wonderfully executed forward four-and-a-half somersault, the first score of more than 100 in the competition.

To win, Aisen and Yuan had to score 102.76 or more. It was a tough ask, but my word did they come close as Daley and Lee waited anxiously to see the outcome, and with scoring just 101.52, it meant that elusive Olympic gold medal for Tom Daley, and a début Olympic gold for Matty Lee. For China, it was the first time since the event was inaugurated at Sydney in 2000 that they had not won gold. Oleksandr Bondar and Viktor Minibayev of the ROC shared second place with Daley and Lee after two dives and maintained the bronze medal position from dive three onwards.