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Just one week after winning the mixed team event at the World Cup opener in Guadalajara, team China easily defended its title on Friday night in Windsor, Canada, at the second stop of the tour. Mexico took silver and Italy earned bronze.
China held a firm grip on its lead in the mixed team contest on Friday to win back-to-back gold medals in the discipline on the 2025 World Cup tour. Nineteen-year-old Cheng Zilong did China’s heavy lifting, competing in three of the six dives – while his countrywoman, Chen Yuxi, 19, the two-time Olympic silver medalist in women’s 10m, claimed the highest score of the contest when she nailed an armstand back triple on the 10m platform to add 90.75 points to China’s winning total: 478.80.
At the midpoint of the competition, Germany was in second place, trailing China by 36.45 points and hoping to upgrade its bronze medal from last week in Guadalajara, but it faltered in the 10m rounds and finished sixth instead.
Meanwhile, Mexico marched up the leaderboard in the late rounds to secure the silver medal thanks, in part, to Randal Willars Valdez’s forward 4½ on the 10m platform, notable for its a 4.1 degree of difficulty. He was the only diver on Friday to venture into the zone above 4 DD. The dive received 7s and 7.5s from the judges so it wasn’t his best, but it still contributed a crucial 90.20 points toward Mexico’s second-place total of 412.70.
Italy secured the bronze medal, 10.35 points behind Mexico, and was elevated by consistent diving from their 10m aces: Sarah Jodoin di Maria, 25, and economics student Riccardo Giovannini, 22.
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Afterwards, despite winning gold, China’s divers said they could do better and didn’t reveal their strategy – if they had one. Cheng Zilong was pleased to received higher scores than he had at the Guadalajara World Cup and attributed his improvement to “putting more attention on this competition.”
Chen Yuxi thought she performed “the same” in Windsor as she had in Guadalajara, on the same dives, to help China win another gold.
Team Mexico featured three of the four divers it had entered in the team event in Guadalajara, where it placed fourth. The new addition in Windsor was Willars Valdez who trains in Monterrey.
A fun moment was watching Mexico’s 14-year-old Mia Zazil Cueva Lobato compete on 3m, including her 3m synchro dive with Osmar Olvera Ibarra, the two-time Olympic medalist at Paris 2024. Olvera, now 20, backed off his traditionally high DD to accommodate the young prodigy from Guadalajara.
For her part, Cueva Lobato said she stayed calm by thinking about her breathing.
As for the bronze medalists, Chiara Pellacani, 22, said her Italian team worked really well together and was very consistent.
Her countryman, Matteo Santoro, 18, a triple junior world champion in springboard admitted, “I didn’t dive very good today, but the team is amazing and I’m so proud of them. We talk to each other between dives. We just tried to cheer each other on.”
Italy’s 10m ace Jodoin di Maria added, “We hope to do a bit better in China [at the Super Final in Beijing], let’s put it that way. I don’t think it would be possible to beat China, but to overtake Mexico, maybe we can clean up our entries and hope for the best.”
Next: Four more gold medalists will be crowned on Saturday, starting at 10 am local time in women’s 3m synchro followed by men’s 10m synchro. The last half of the day will feature the women’s individual 10m final (in which Chinese teenagers Quan Hongchan and Chen Yuxi were the top qualifiers) and the men’s 3m individual final featuring two-time Olympic silver medalist Wang Zongyuan, 23, and his teammate Zheng Jiuyuan, 20.
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