Platform, Women

With five-time Olympic gold medalist Chen Ruolin not defending the title she won in 2008 and 2012, the way was open for the new Chinese prodigy, 15-year-old Ren Qian, to win gold. At the 2016 Rio Test and World Cup event, Ren received four perfect 10s in her first four dives and then in her final dive received 10s from all seven judges in what was described as the “Dive of the Tournament”. She won the event by more than 43 points from her team-mate Si Yajie. On her way to winning the bronze medal at the 2015 World Championship in Kazan, Ren also registered a maximum 10. The individual platform event at the 2015 World Championships was won by Kim Kuk-Hyang of North Korea, with Pandelela Rinong, the London 2012 bronze medalist, in third place behind Ren.

Canada’s Meaghan Benfeito led after the first round of dives of the preliminary round, but it was the Chinese pair of Si and Ren who finished one and two, with Ren 11.65 points behind Si, but a massive 39 points ahead of the third best qualifier, Jessica Parratto of the US. Rinong qualified for the semi-final in sixth place. The world champion Kim Kuk-Hyang finished 25th and was outside the top 18 to make it through to the next round; her best dive brought her just 67.50 points as she was eliminated. Last of the qualifiers was Russia’s Yuliya Timoshinina who landed face first into the pool on her second dive and received just 14 points, never recovering from that, but what an Olympic pedigree she had. Her parents Svetlana and Vladimir were both Olympic divers, her grandfather Aleksandr Timoshinin was a two-time Olympic gold medallist rower and her grandmother Nataliya Kuznetsova won a diving silver medal in 1968.

The semi-final saw the two Chinese divers separated at the top of the leaderboard by the American Parratto as Ren slipped from second to third after a poor third dive, a backward three and a half somersault, for which the judges gave her just 46.20 points. She recovered with two final dives of 81.60 to stay in contention while her team-mate Si Jayjie remained in the gold medal position helped by a brilliant third dive, an armstand back double somersault with one and a half twists, for which she received four 9s from the seven judges and a total of 84.80 as she went into the final 22.30 points ahead of Jessica Parratto with Australia’s Melissa Wu up to fourth.

Canada’s Meaghan Benfeito led after the first round dives in the final with Si and Parratto sharing second place. But after dive two, Si was in the lead with Ren moving up from fourth to second, with Parratto in third and Benfeito relegated to fourth, but then the competition all changed. Ren Qian took the lead after her third dive, a brilliantly executed inward three-and-a-half somersault, which earned her 94.05, the highest score of the night, and, in the same round, Parratto moved out of contention with the worst dive of the night, which scored just 44.80. Ren’s two final dives were both in excess of 90 points and she achieved four 10s in those two dives. Only Si stayed with her but even she knew it was all over before her final dive as she needed over 100 to win. While the two Chinese divers were pulling away from the field, Benfeito dived consistently to win the bronze medal, albeit 30 points behind Si and 50 points behind Ren, to add to the bronze she won in the synchronised platform event. On winning at 15 years and 180 days, Ren became the youngest medalist at the Rio Games, as she was 120 days younger than Japan’s Mima Ito who won bronze in the women’s team table tennis two days earlier.