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China pull off double diving gold
 Jai Tong and Yuan Pei Lin never looked threatened in the 10m platform event MONTREAL, Canada -- China pulled off a golden diving double on the opening day of the world swimming championships in Montreal. They captured the women's 10-meter platform and men's three-meter springboard synchronised events. Winners of a record six of eight gold medals at last year's Athens Olympics, Chinese divers look poised for another assault on the podium. Teenage duo Jai Tong (15) and Yuan Pei Lin (14) lead the charge in the 10-meter platform discipline. Wang Feng and He Chong followed with a precision performance that provided China with a perfect start to the two-week competition, taking top spot in the three-meter event. "We wish Chinese divers take all the gold medals and bring them back to China," Wang said. That could very well happen with China building towards the 2008 Beijing Olympics and their divers tightening their stranglehold on the discipline. Right from the opening dive, both Chinese duos were never threatened, Jai and Yuan posting a five dive total of 351.60. Australia's Chantelle Newbery, a gold medal winner in the 10m individual platform in Athens and Loudy Tourky, bronze medallists in the same event, joined forces to take silver with 334.89. "The Chinese have always been dominating throughout my career but it's not impossible to beat them," Newbery said. "But they are very difficult." Meaghan Benfeito and Roseline Filion brightened a dreary opening day on Ile Ste Helene by giving hosts Canada their first medal, taking bronze with 328.80. He and Wang turned in a polished effort, finishing with a winning mark of 384.42 that easily out-pointed Germany's Tobias Schellenberg and Andreas Wels on 364.59. After being shutout of the diving medals in Athens for the first time since 1912, Americans made a quick return to the podium with brothers Justin and Troy Dumas claiming bronze with a score of 360.27. Earlier in the day, Russian teenager Larisa Ilchenko claimed the first gold medal of the championships by successfully defending her women's 5km open water title. Under dark, rainy skies in front of a sparse crowd watching from the banks of the St Lawrence, Ilchenko clocked a winning time of 55 minutes, 40.1 seconds, crossing 4.2 seconds clear of American Margy Keefe. Edith Van Dijk completed the podium, the third place finish bringing the 31-year-old Dutchwoman's world championship medal haul to 12, including four golds. Thomas Lurz of Germany scored the narrowest of victories in the men's 5km open event that saw all three medallists cross within 1.7 seconds of each other. Lurz, gold medallist over 10km at the 2004 worlds, needed every centimeter of the 5km race to collect his second individual world title, edging American Chip Peterson by 1.6 seconds with Italy's Simone Ercoli 0.1 seconds further back. "I tried to swim away but the last 300 meters were very hard, the American didn't give up," Lurz said. "He (Peterson) fought and fought and I'm happy I won." 
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