Olympic champions Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova of Russia have claimed their third gold medal in the synchronized swimming technical duet event at the world swimming championships in Melbourne, Australia.
Davydova and Ermakova put on an exceptional display Tuesday to clinch the gold medal with 98.833 points. The Spanish duo of Paola Tirados Sanchez and Gemma Mengual Civil took the silver with 97.50 points, while Saho Harada and Emiko Suzuki of Japan won the bronze (97.167).
Russia's dominance of synchronized swimming continued in the team free preliminaries. The Russians scored 99 points to take the lead heading into Saturday's finals. Spain is second (98.333), while Japan is in third place (97.167).
Earlier, Russia's Larisa Ilchenko shrugged off repeated jellyfish stings to win her second open-water gold medal, winning the 10-kilometer race in a time of two hours, three minutes and 57.9 seconds. Britain's Cassandra Patten (2:03:58.9) won the silver while Australia's Kate Brookes-Peterson (2:03:59.5) took the bronze.
The Chinese diving team continues to impress, with Luo Yutong (466.50) and He Chong (423.30) taking first and second in the men's one-meter springboard preliminaries. Siarhei Kuchmasau of Belarus (87.75) is in third place. In the women's 10-meter platform preliminaries, China's Chen Ruolin holds the lead (400.80) followed by Paola Espinosa of Mexico (367.15) and Wang Xin of China (366.45).
In the men's water polo preliminaries Tuesday, Serbia, Croatia, the United States, Italy, Greece, Canada, Hungary and Spain were the winners.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.