Women's 10m Platform Final Chen Qianxi won gold Quan Hongchan won silver

What did Chen Yuxi VS Quan Hongchan rely on to win six in a row?

On the afternoon of April 4, the most notable showdown of the 16 FINA Diving World Cup in Xi'an was held at the Xi'an Olympic Sports Center, which was the women's 2023-meter platform final. The suspense of the championship is not whether it belongs to the Chinese team, but whether the first place is Olympic champion Quan Hongchan or two-time world champion Chen Yuxi. In the end, the result, like last year's World Championships, the World Cup and a series of events in the past two years, the championship was once again won by Shanghai girl Chen Qianxi with a score of 10.431 points, and Quan Hongchan won the second place with 20.423 points. This was already Chen Yuxi's sixth consecutive victory over Junior Sister.

Quan Hongchan took the lead in the preliminary round and suffered a counterattack

In yesterday morning's preliminary round, Quan Hongchan jumped out of a high score of 438.90 and ranked first with an advantage of 11.85 points ahead of Chen Yuxi. There will be no semi-finals in the individual events of this Xi'an competition, and no contestants will be eliminated after the preliminary round, but the order of appearance in the final will be determined. The process and result were similar to those of the Shanghai National Championship a month earlier, when Quan Hongchan took the lead in the heats, Chen Yuxi was second, and the rest of the contestants posed no threat to the two dream team leaders, Hua Dan.

In the heats, one of Quan Hongchan's best moves was the 207C (tumbling backwards for three and a half weeks and hugging her knees), which used to be regarded as her absolute weakness. The little girl conquered the referees with a perfect performance, and the five judges gave 5 points, which gave her a perfect score of 10 points, which is more perfect than her performance when she won the Tokyo Olympics (99.95 points at the time). It was because of this flawless play that Quan Hongchan's ranking surpassed Chen Yuxi after the fourth round of moves and was the last to appear in the afternoon final.

Chen Qianxi has the advantage of comprehensive competition

In the first three jumps of the final, both of them played normally, and Chen Yuxi jumped better, 7 points ahead of Quan Hongchan. The fourth jump came to the fateful 207C, this time the two little girls did not jump well, Quan Hongchan was a little far from the performance in the morning, and did not control the rhythm; Chen also made a mistake, and neither scored more than 70 points. In the last move, the two little girls returned to normal, jumping out of the high score of 91.20, Quan Hongchan failed to achieve a reversal. In the intra-team competition between the two, Chen Yuxi won again.

Looking back at the history of the confrontation between the two, Quan Hongchan won the championship twice at the Tokyo Olympics and the Shaanxi National Games in 2021. This year, she was like a newborn calf, and her first overseas competition was the world's top Olympic stage, fearless and shocking the world, and she also showed her invincibility at the National Games. In 2022, the competition between the two has changed. Last year, there were two major competitions - the Budapest World Championships and the Berlin Diving World Cup, and Chen Yuxi defeated Quan Hongchan twice in a row. Especially in the World Cup, Chen Yuxi won the women's 449-meter platform championship with a personal best of 85.10 points, which is also the second best time in history, 19.40 points ahead of Quan Hongchan.

In the two official intra-team test matches reported, Chen Yuxi defeated Quan Hongchan. In the latest team test match, when Quan Hongchan did the 207C action very perfectly, Chen Yuxi still won 2.10 points, which shows that in the comprehensive competition, Chen Yuxi has slowly occupied a certain advantage.

Team leader Zhou Jihong: The victory and defeat are only in millimeters

Judging from the process and performance of these competitions, Quan Hongchan's physical development has overcome well, her posture is still light, and the 207C has little problem in terms of action essentials and key links. Chen Qianxi is based on high movement stability, heart like water, the last 4 domestic and international open competitions, from the World Championships, World Cup to the National Championship and this World Cup sub-tournament, she has several times been behind in the preliminary round or semi-finals, but in the final adjusted mentality to laugh to the end, the young age does have a rare style of generals.

In the heart of Zhou Jihong, the leader of the Chinese diving team, both of them have extremely high standards, and the victory and defeat are only within a millimeter. Zhou Jihong once commented on the two at this stage: "The two of them are not saying who is better, but they are both very good and hard, just look at the game." It seems that even Zhou Jihong, who has always been prepared for danger in peace, this project is the most reassuring of all events in the World Championships or the Olympic Games.

Text/Reporter Liu Ailin

Co-ordinator/Wang Yong