On April 20, Beijing time, at the 2024 FINA Diving World Cup Finals, the men's 3-meter springboard preliminaries, Wang Zongyuan, Xie Sicheng, and Zheng Jiuyuan competed on the same field. Zheng Jiuyuan played well, created a big upset, and defeated Wang Zongyuan with a 0.25-point advantage, winning the first place in the preliminaries, Wang Zongyuan ranked second, and the veteran Xie Sicheng ranked third in the preliminaries, according to the rules, he missed the finals.
Veteran Xie Sicheng appeared in Group A of the preliminary round, scoring 86.70 points in the first round of 5154B, 79.20 points in the second round of 5353B, 84.60 points in the third round of 207C, 91.00 points in the fourth round of 307C, 88.80 points in the fifth round of 407B, and 96.90 points in the last round of 109C. In the preliminaries, Xie Sicheng was 3.50 points behind Zheng Jiuyuan and 3.25 points behind Wang Zongyuan, ranking third in the preliminaries.
As we all know, Xie Sicheng was crowned a double champion at the Tokyo Olympics, and then temporarily left the national team to rest and adjust, and only returned to participate last season, and in the two World Cup competitions before this season, Xie Sicheng was all absent from the 3-meter board competition, so he did not have World Cup points for the project, so he could not qualify for the finals.
However, the Chinese team is the host of the World Cup finals, and one more place can participate in the preliminaries, so the veteran Xie Sicheng played in the preliminaries of this game to find the feeling of the game and prepare for the next sprint to the Olympic Games. To put it simply, in the World Cup finals, Xie Sicheng could only play in the preliminaries, and even if he was third in the preliminaries, he missed the final. However, through the preliminaries, we can see that Xie Sicheng is still very strong, and is expected to join forces with Wang Zongyuan to participate in the Paris Olympics again.
The 20-year-old Zheng Jiuyuan played quite well in the preliminaries, scoring 94.50 points in the first round of 5337D, which was the highest score in the first round. In the second round, 205B played mediocre, scoring 67.50 points. In the third round of 307C, he adjusted in time and scored 84.00 points, ranking second in the third round. In the fourth round of 407C, Zheng Jiuyuan scored 88.40 points, and he was still second in this round. In the last two rounds, Zheng Jiuyuan played a super god, first 109C with a difficulty value of 3.8, Zheng Jiuyuan scored 98.80 points, which was the highest score in the fifth round. Then there was 5156B, which had a difficulty value of 3.9, and Zheng Jiuyuan scored 97.50 points, which was the highest score in the whole game in this round.
In the end, the teenager Zheng Jiuyuan scored 530.70 points, defeating Wang Zongyuan by a slight advantage of 0.25 points and winning the first place in the preliminaries. In the previous two World Cups, Zheng Jiuyuan's performance was not stable enough and missed the medal, but this time in the finals, he showed a surprising state.
Wang Zongyuan also played steadily, scoring 86.70 points in 407C and 92.75 points in 5337D, and his average performance in 5156B, which has a difficulty value of 3.9, only scored 81.90 points. The fourth round of 307C scored 84.00 points, the fifth round of 207C scored 88.20 points, and the last round of 109C scored 96.90 points, Wang Zongyuan scored a total of 530.45 points, ranking second in the preliminaries with a difference of 0.25 points. I hope that Zheng Jiuyuan will continue to break out in the finals and impact Wang Zongyuan, and I believe that the two players of the Chinese team will continue their good form in the preliminaries, and strive to achieve the championship and runner-up in the project, especially Zheng Jiuyuan needs a medal to improve his self-confidence!