Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow got their years off to the perfect start as the pair picked up a bronze medal in the FINA Diving World Series in Beijing.
In the first major diving event of 2018, the bronze medallists from the Rio 2016 Olympics repeated the trick by amassing 400.68 points to finish comfortably clear of Koreans Kim Yeongnam and Woo Ha-ram.
In a repeat of the 2016 Diving World Series, Daley and Goodfellow stood third on the podium as Chinese pairing Chen Aisen and Yang Hao collected the gold medals with a superb 484.29 – Ukraine’s Oleksandr Gorshkovozov and Maksym Dolgov came second.
The British pairing made a consistent start to proceedings, opening up with dives of 53.40 and 50.40 to put themselves into joint second place with Russian’s Aleksandr Bondar and Viktor Minibaev.
Two further impressive dives of 81.60 and 79.68 had the duo 35.28 off the Chinese pairing at the top of the leaderboard but two fine dives from the Ukrainian team of 79.68 and 82.56 meant it would be a close battle for second place.
Unfortunately, Daley and Goodfellow could not hold onto silver as jumps of 73.44 and 62.16 meant the pair slipped into third right at the death.
But with a medal in the bank world champion Daley can now focus on the 10m platform in two days time.
World Championship silver medallist Grace Reid will go tomorrow in the 3m synchro before Matty Lee and Lois Toulson team up in the 10m mixed synchro on Sunday.
Elsewhere on a busy opening Diving World Series, China’s Chen Yiwen and Wang Han took the 3m synchro title as compatriots Zhang Minjie and Zhang Jiaqi won gold in the women’s 10m synchronised platform.
Sportsbeat 2018