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China Winds up with Clean Sweep at Diving World Series
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Diver Zhou Luxin reined the tower in Nanjing on Sunday, helping powerhouse China to draw the curtain of the three-leg World Series with another clean sweep of gold.

China had bagged home all the 16 at the first two legs of World Series golds.

In the last event on Sunday, the 19-year-old Zhou Luxin and his 16-year-old teammate Lin Yue brought a furious showdown in the men's ten-meter platform final.

The World Championships runner-up Zhou nailed three spectacular dives to earn three high scores above 100 points. Lin chased tightly in the last three rounds, but failed to hold back Zhou to win at 582.40 points.

"I didn't care Lin's performance during the competition, but concentrated on each of my dives," said Zhou, "I believe the biggest rival is myself."

Lin, who won the bronze medalist in the event at Melbourne World Championships, trailed at 575.70 points. The other two finalists Dmitry Dobroskok from Russian and Jose Guerra of Cuba were more than 100 points behind the Chinese aces.

Russian world champion Gleb Galperin missed the event at Nanjing due to injury.

Earlier, neither Yuliya Pakhalina nor Wu Minxia managed to dethrone diving queen Guo Jingjing in the women's three-meter springboard final.

As the reigning Olympic champion and four-time world title winner, Guo executed her five dives well enough to collect 413.60 points, leading teammate Wu with a big margin of 30.50 points.

Russia veteran Pakhalina finished third at 332.30 points.

"The three-leg diving meet finally ended," said Guo, who bagged both the individual and synchronized golds in the springboard at the inaugural World Series.

"It's hard to keep in form in the three-week competitions and I' m happy to perform normally under such circumstances," said the 25-year-old diving star.

Besides, world champions Qin Kai and Wang Feng unsurprisingly claimed their third consecutive victory in the men's three-meter springboard synchronized event at the World Series.

The Chinese pair led the squad of five duos at 471.45 points, followed by Erick Fornaris/Jorge Betancourt from Cuba and Canadian Arturo Miranda/Alexandre Despatie at 424.68 and 411.06 points respectively.

Wang Xin and Chen Ruolin were crowned in the women's ten-meter platform synchronized event with a total score of 353.46 points.

Australian pair Melissa Wu and Briony Cole followed at 340.56 points. Canadian veteran Emilie Heymans and her partner Marie-Eve Marleau got the third placing at 339.90 points.

The FINA Diving World Series is reserved for the cream of the crop in the sport: the top eight from the World Championships in the individual events and the top six in the synchronized events.

Several divers missed the world-class events due to injury or tiredness while Russian legend Dmitry Sautin withdrew from the last leg competition in the last minute because of back injury.

(Xinhua News Agency September 17, 2007)

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