Diving: Pandelela-Mun Yee Cruise Into 10m Platform Synchro Final

Leong Mun Yee (bottom) and Pandelela Rinong finished third in the women’s 10m platform synchronised diving preliminaries at the FINA World Championships at Piscina Municipal de Montjuic on Monday. — GLENN GUAN / The Star

BARCELONA: Divers Pandelela Rinong-Leong Mun Yee breezed through to the women’s 10m platform synchro final but they can expect no favours from the opposition in their hope to win a prized World Championships medal at the Montjuic Municipal Pool.

Pandelela-Mun Yee finished third in the preliminaries with 310.98 points behind Olympic silver medallists Paola Espinosa-Alejandra Orozco of Mexico (314.25) and Chinese favourites Chen Ruolin-Liu Huixia (340.92).

The Malaysian pairing started well and were tied with China on 104.40 points after the first two jumps. Pandelela-Mun Yee, however, slipped to fifth with an untidy third dive but managed to come back to hold third placing. A 70.08 in the fifth and final dive saw them taking third just ahead of Canadians and London Olympic bronze medallists Meaghan Benfeito-Roseline Filion (308.40), Russians Yulia Timoshinina-Ekaterina Petukhova (308.04) and Great Britain’s Tonia Couch-Sarah Barrow (306.54).

Pandelela-Mun Yee gave Malaysia the only medal in world championships history by claiming bronze in this discipline in the 2009 edition in Rome but they finished sixth in Shanghai two years later.

The Malaysian pair will surely want to keep the momentum going to nail a place on the podium and head coach Yang Zhuliang can only pray things will work out their way.

“Their performance is okay. No big mistakes and enough to get them to the final. China look the strongest and I don’t think they can lose the gold.

“It will be tough for us as we are fighting with Canada, England, Australia and Mexico for a medal. After the preliminary rounds, these are the five teams who can win silver or bronze but all depends on the performance during the final,” said Zhuliang.

Pandelela-Mun Yee have made good impressions on the big stage so far this year with three medals at the Diving World Series this year, managing to take two silvers and one bronze from the five legs they participated.