The Chinese divers moved closer to the sweep of all the eight golds at the Beijing Games as Chen Ruolin brought in seventh gold yesterday by winning the women's 10m platform.
Emilie Heymans of Canada settled for the silver, while China's Wang Xin, the reigning world champion, took bronze.
It was the only gold medal that China's "Diving Dream Team" failed to win at the last two Olympics. Fu Mingxia last won for China at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
China's Chen Ruolin on her way to a win in the women's 10-meter platform diving final. [China Daily]
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American diver Laura Wilkinson beat Li Na at the 2000 Sydney Games, while Australian Chantelle Newbery stunned Lao Lishi to win the 2004 Athens gold. Both Li and Lao finished second.
"I'm very happy to win this gold back for China after 12 years," said Chen. "But I didn't put too much pressure on myself before the competition. I just treated this final as if it was a training session."
Unlike the previous six diving victories, in which the Chinese divers won easily by large margins, yesterday's final was a much closer battle between the top two divers.
With Chen leading with a small margin after the first three dives, Heymans, the 2003 world champion, overtook Chen in the fourth round with a dive of difficulty level 3.4, earning her 95.20 points.
But Chen managed to overtake the Canadian with a flawless fifth dive, which gave her the highest score of the day, 100.30.
Chen, who also won the 10m synchronized diving title with Wang, scored 447.70 points, while Heymans had 437.05.
"I didn't notice the score before my fifth dive, but I realized that my score might be lower than Emilie, so I was a little bit nervous," said the 15-year-old Chen. "When I performed the last dive well, I was very relaxed."
In the lead-up to the Beijing Games, the only major title she lost was at last year's world championships, where she finished second behind Wang.
Heymans also bounced back from her own Athens Games nightmare, in which a mistake in her last dive cost her a possible gold.
She said: "Athens was a long time ago. Today, I was just trying to keep focused on what I was trying to do. I had to stay focused on my last dive so I could finish really well."
Wilkinson could only finish ninth with 311.80, and the 30-year-old veteran announced her retirement after the competition. "It obviously wasn't the meet of my dreams, but it was my last dive in the Olympics," she said.