China wins 7 of 8 diving golds at Rio Olympics

Chen Aisen claimed the gold in the men's 10-metre platform event on Saturday to help China take home seven out of Rio's eight diving titles, while Mexico's German Sanchez and American David Boudia took the silver and bronze.

• WATCH: Chen Aisen's perfect dive leads to gold in 10m platform

Chen, at his first Olympics, showed consistency throughout his dives, gaining high scores to total 585.30 with his tight spins and clean entries into the water even as his rivals, including teammate Qiu Bo, stumbled.
 
Boudia, who won gold in London, recovered from a poor semifinal performance, where he finished 10th, to acquire 525.25 points. His final, lower-scoring dive pushed him down to third position at the last minute behind Sanchez, who scored 532.70.
 
London 2012 silver medallist Qiu ended the competition in fifth place despite scoring a perfect 10 from all six judges on his third dive, after low scores of 47.25 and 47.50 on his second and fifth attempts knocked him out of the running for a podium spot.
 
Tom Daley of Britain, who had been expected to be a strong medal contender, was surprisingly ousted in the semifinals after he botched three of his six dives to come in last. He had topped the preliminaries on Friday.
 
The only diving gold China failed to win in Rio was in the men's three-metre springboard event, where they took the bronze. 

Canadians miss final

Canadian diver Vincent Riendeau shook off any nerves from Friday's preliminaries but it wasn't enough to qualify for Saturday afternoon's 12-man final.

Riendeau, who qualified 14th among 18 for the Olympic semifinals at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre, scored 436.30 points in his six dives to place 14th on Saturday morning.

• SCHEDULE: Diving at Rio 2016
• VIDEO: Final dive by Canada's Vincent Riendeau
• VIDEO: Riendeau scores 75.90 on 2nd dive

Maxim Bouchard of Saint-Constant, Que., didn't advance to the semifinals after the 25-year-old missed on his last dive Friday and dropped from 14th to 19th, instead qualifying as a reserve.

Low scores on his final two dives proved costly for the 19-year-old Riendeau.

On his sixth dive, a back 1½ pike with 3½ twists, Riendeau failed to bring up his hips to get vertical into the water and picked up 64.35 points, nearly 15 more than Friday's 49.50, his lowest score on the day.

Dive five was Riendeau's most difficult, a reverse 3 ½ tuck, and he wasn't as sharp on the kick-out as his back 3 ½ tuck. The Canadian was given three 6.5s for a total of 66.30 and dropped from eighth spot to 11th overall.

Impressive start

Riendeau started strong Saturday morning, receiving three scores of 8.0 and totalling 72.00 points on his forward 3 ½ pike, a big improvement from his 58.50 on the same dive in the preliminary round when he battled nerves.

He also went from 70.95 to 75.9 on his armstand back tuck to sit 11th after two dives.

Riendeau remained 11th following his inward 3 ½ tuck (73.60) but jumped to eighth when he scored three 8.5s for a score of 84.15 on his back 3 ½ tuck with a 3.3 degree of difficulty.

Riendeau came high off the platform, showed great control and spotted the water with every turn, leading to strong entry into the pool.

With files from Reuters