It was one heck of a showdown in the men's synchronized diving 3 meter springboard, but when it was all said and done the US diving team earned themselves another medal as Stanford's Kristian Ipsen and partner Troy Dumais earned Olympic bronze medals on Wednesday.
China completed its goal of sweeping all four synchronized diving events at the London Games as the heavily favored Qin Kai and Luo Yutong led all six rounds, totaling 477.00 points. It was Qin's second straight Olympic title, having won the event four years ago in Beijing with a different partner.
Ilya Zakharov and Evgeny Kuznetsov of Russia took the silver at 459.63. They were followed by the 19-year old Ipsen, and 32-year old Dumais, who is competing in his fourth Olympics. Their combined score was 446.70.
The bronze is the second medal this week for the U.S. diving program that had struggled in recent Olympics. They hadn't earned a medal since the 2000 games in Sydney until this week. That brings the total to 26 medals for the USA, only one behind China. Check out SI's medal tracker here.
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