June 6, 2010
CHANGZHOU, China – Émilie Heymans of St-Lambert, Que., and Jennifer Abel of Laval, Que., won the bronze medal on Sunday in the women’s three-metre synchro event on Sunday to conclude the FINA World Cup diving competition.
The World Cup, held every four years, is one of diving’s major events along with the world championships and Olympic Games. Canada ends the competition with two bronze medals. On Friday, Roseline Filion of Laval and Meaghan Benfeito of Montreal were third on women’s 10-metre synchro. Canada also had three fourth place finishes.
In Sunday’s women’s three-meter synchro, He Zi and Wu Mingxia of China won the gold medal with 354.90 points. Svetlana Philippova and Anastasia Pozdniakova of Russia were second at 323.52 and Heymans and Abel, third after the preliminaries, took the bronze at 322.50 edging Australians Briony Cole and Sharleen Stratton by 2.11 points.
Heymans, a three-time Olympic medallist, and Abel were competing together for only the second time. In April they won a silver at the World Series finale in Mexico.
Already battling a nagging hip injury, Heymans injured her ankle on Friday in training. That forced her to miss the individual three-metre event on Saturday.
Matthew Mitcham of Australia denied China a clean gold medal sweep in all eight events winning the men’s 10-metre tower. Riley McCormick of Victoria was 19th.
