Platform, Women

At the age of 15 Chen Ruolin had swept aside her rivals to win gold in front of an adoring home crowd at the Beijing Olympics. Four years later her reputation had been further enhanced by three more world titles including the Indi dual platform title at the 2011 World Championships. If there was a threat to Chen then it seemed it might possibly come from Mexico’s Paola Espinosa or from her own team mate Hu Yadan but realistically it was Chen’s title to lose. The faint hopes of an upset faded quickly and the champion showed herself to be a level above her opposition. She scored the highest marks of each of her five dives in the final and won by the huge margin of 55 points. In contrast the other 11 finalists were covered by just 22 points.

Neither Hu nor Espinosa were able to truly recover from early errors and it was the inexperienced Australian Brittany Broben who placed second with Pandelela Pamg providing a major breakthrough for Malaysian diving by winning the bronze medal. Broben had placed only 17th at the previous year’s world championships.

Chen joined three other women as repeat champions in the platform event – following Dorothy Poynton-Hill (1932-36), Pat McCormick (1952-56), and Fu Mingxia (1992-96). The feat has also been done five times in springboard diving.