Barcelona, July 14: Russian legend Dmitry Sautin lived up to his title as king of diving here yesterday when he teamed up with Alexander Dobroskok to win the men's 3m synchronised springboard gold on the opening day of the world swimming championships.
Winning a fifth world title aged 29 was quite an achievement for the man from Moscow whose struggle with injury over the years have led to many to write off his career more than once.
Sautin, who has won titles in all forms of diving over worlds and Olympics, once again proved he was master of all he surveyed in the Montjuic pool overlooking the Catalan capital.
The Russian duo, who had led the morning's preliminaries, scored a combined 369.18 points after five jumps to push Chinese favourites Wang Tianling and Wang Feng into silver position with 343.29.
Germany's Andreas Wels and Tobias Schellenberg took bronze with 334.44. The Russians scored a string of maximum ten points during the finals to largely dominate the Chinese, who achieved one, and showed the effects of having missed vital competition because of the outbreak of the SARS virus in Asia.



Sautin's most recent mishap was surgery this spring on a recurring left knee problem, and he admitted his return to form had been mainly due to the Chinese absence from a number of events including the grand prix super final in Mexico last month because of SARS.


Bureau Report