Tonia Couch and Sarah Barrow led the medal charge on day one of the FINA/NVC Diving World Series in London, taking bronze in the Women’s 10m Synchro platform final.
The British pair, who train together in Plymouth with coach Andy Banks, collected their second synchro medal of the series after their third place finish in Kazan last week.
Saving the best until last, Couch and Barrow scored 73.92 for their Back 2 ½ Somersault 1 ½ Twists to secure a total of 311.88points – just three points shy of their FINA Diving World Series best score.
25-year old Couch said: “We’re absolutely over the moon, we really focused on what we had to do today and we achieved it.
“We’ve got the World Championships to look forward to this year and to be consistently winning medals during this series is a great indicator of where we are going into that competition.”
Barrow said: “We felt a little bit of pressure coming into the London leg after our bronze last week in Russia, especially in front of a home crowd and friends and family. We managed to keep the momentum going from last week so we’re really happy.”
Leading the way from the start, the formidable Chinese pairing of Ruolin Chen and Huixia Liu made it four out of four wins in the series so far as they dived to gold in 332.88, with Malaysia's Jun Hoong Cheong and Mun Yee Leong winning the cat and mouse battle for silver with a total score of 314.94.
In the Men’s 10m Synchro platform final, new British duo of Matthew Lee and James Denny took to the boards in their FINA Diving World Series debut.
A solid opening dive saw them sitting comfortably in the mix against an eight-strong field of world class synchro divers, finishing fifth after all six rounds of competition with 385.32 points.
Denny said: “I’m absolutely buzzing after that performance, we put in some great dives and we didn’t really make many mistakes. It’s great experience for us moving on hopefully to future events.”
Lee said: “It was so much fun today. After ever dive we were loving it because the atmosphere in here was so amazing.”
Again it was China who paved the way at the top of the leader board, carving a 40 point lead out of the field for a final points score of 474.84 and the gold, ahead of Germany (427.04) and Mexico (420.78).
- Click here for full results from the morning.