Pakhalina Dominates Goodwill Games 3-Meter

China fails to medal in first women’s Olympic event

For the first time during the 1998 Goodwill Games, Chinese divers have missed the awards stand. Neither Zhang Jing or teammate Guo Jingjing finished within the top three, instead letting divers from Russia and Australia gather the awards.

Yuliya Pakhalina, the women’s 3-meter world champion, easily defended her title with an 80 point spread over Australian silver medalist Chantelle Michell. Russian bronze medalist Irina Lashko, who also took the women’s 1-meter gold on Thursday, added in a post-competition interview, "I am very proud of Yuliya. She is a really good diver and she was consistent all the way through the competition."

Erica Sorgi, from Mission Viejo, Calif., was the USA’s top finisher. She dove for fifth behind Swede Anna Lindberg. "I think a couple of dives could have been better," Sorgi stated. "Overall I did all right, but I could have done better." Texans Tracy Bonner, Laura Wilkinson and Kathy Pesek finished seventh, eighth and 10th, respectively.

The morning session featured two crowd-pleasing synchronized events, men’s synchro 3-meter springboard and women’s synchro 10-meter platform. Diving to the cheers of one of the largest aquatics crowd yet at the 1998 Goodwill Games, Chinese divers Cai Yuyan and Sang Xue easily earned the gold medal, beating out Ukraine silver medalists and current world champions Olena Zhupyna and Svetlana Serbina by over 30 points.

16-year-old Cai, from Guangdong, was one half of the 1998 World Championships synchro platform silver medal team. Her partner at that time, Chen Li, is not participating in the Goodwill Games. "We have only been diving together for one week," commented Cai about new partner Sang, "and it all worked out." In the men’s 3-meter synchro event, springboard genius Yu Zhoucheng and teammate Xu Hao added another title to China’s growing medal stock-pile. The duo defeated Russian team Alexei Ilyin and Dmitri Baibakov, silver, and Germans Alexander Mesch and Holger Schlepps, bronze. Their win brings China’s medal count total to seven (four gold, two silver and one bronze).