GWANGJU, South Korea, July 18 (Xinhua) -- China dominated Thursday's proceedings at the 2019 FINA World Championships, taking the country's gold medal tally up to 11 since the competition's opening day on July 12.
China's 11th gold came courtesy of Xie Siyi, who finished with 545.45 points in the men's 3m springboard final.
Cao Yuan, who had earlier taken gold along with Xie in the men's 3m synchro, took silver with 517.85 points, before once again claiming gold in the men's 10m synchro, this time paired with Chen Aisen.
Jack Laugher of Britain, who had been leading after the first five attempts, slipped to third in the final classification after a mistake on his sixth dive, ultimately finishing with 504.55 points.
China therefore top the current medal table with 11 gold, five silver and one bronze medals, followed by Russia with six gold and three silver medals, and Germany with two gold and two bronze medals.
Chinese divers also prevailed in the women's 3m springboard semifinals, with Shi Tingmao easing into the final in first place with 359.40 points.
China's Wang Han placed third, just 2.30 points behind runner-up Maddison Keeney of Australia who scored 348.10. The finals are scheduled for Friday.
China's artistic swimmers had to settle for second place in the team free combination preliminaries, just 0.5667 short of frontrunners Russia, who scored 96.5667 points.
"We compressed our show from four and a half minutes into four minutes, so our new show is more intensive and difficult than ever," said Wang Jie, head coach of the Chinese team, who praised his swimmers' overall performance. "Our ladies did a great job in their strength and stability, but I think that we can improve more in speed to cover the water more extensively."
Chinese duo Sun Wenyan and Huang Xuechen succumbed again to Russia's Svetlana Kolesnichenko and Svetlana Romashina in the women's duet free final of artistic swimming.
Sun and Huang took second with 95.7667 points, 1.7333 behind the Russian pair, who had also pipped the Chinese duo to gold in the women's duet technical routine.
The German mixed relay team won the 5km open water swimming title in a tight race where just 0.3s divided the top three teams.
The German swimmers finished in 53 minutes and 58.70 seconds, just 0.2s ahead of the Italians who claimed silver and 0.3s faster than the U.S. team who took bronze.
The mixed 5km race was introduced in 2011, when Germany earned a bronze medal. Since then, the German teams won titles in 2013 in Barcelona, in 2015 in Kazan and in 2017 in Budapest.
In the final group matches for women's water polo, Spain was the first country to qualify for the quarterfinals, winning their third consecutive match in Group C by defeating Cuba 19-6. Greece sealed second position, beating Kazakhstan 13-7.
Australia had a narrow 9-7 victory over Japan, while Italy defeated China 14-6 to take control of Group D. Australia took second spot, and China finished third.
In Group A, the United States trounced South Africa 26-1, easing into a quarterfinal berth. The Netherlands beat New Zealand 15-6, taking second spot away from New Zealand.
Hosts South Korea were swept by Canada 2-22, leading the Canadian team to secure third spot and its first win in Group B. Elsewhere, Russia upset Hungary 17-12, thereby qualifying for the quarterfinals.
