James Christie

When Alexandre Despatie dominated the world diving championships with three gold medals at Montreal in 2005, a Chinese rival looked ahead to the Olympics in his homeland and described the star from Laval, Que., as "China's No. 1 enemy right now on 10-metre, three-metre and one-metre."

The "enemy" has decided to concentrate on the springboard events rather than the tower, but he has already started his attack for the Beijing medals podium. Despatie, 23, teamed up with 37-year-old Arturo Miranda of Pointe-Claire, Que., to win the bronze medal in the three-metre synchro competition to open the 56-country FINA World Cup meet in Beijing yesterday.

The pre-Games test event gave him a taste of what it will be like to face Chinese crowds in August at the new National Aquatic Centre, dubbed the Water Cube.

"The Olympic pool is one of the most beautiful indoor pools I've ever seen and the installations are very comfortable and practical for us," Despatie reported on his website. "The Chinese are also a good public and during the preliminaries, the seats were almost full.

"The training is doing very well here and I'm very confident for the three-metre preliminaries [today], even if it will be a big challenge. Almost 60 divers will participate at the event."

He got a taste of what it is like to go up against the deep and strong home-country favourites.

World champions Wang Feng and Qin Kai of China received perfect 10s on their first and third dives in the final en route to the gold medal with 462.12 points, to delight the Water Cube crowd. A Russian pair, Yuriy Kunakov and Dmitri Sautin (a 33-year-old seven-time Olympic medalist going for his fifth Games), were second with 418.65 . Despatie and Miranda followed with 416.94.

"This was our first international competition since September, so it's a good performance for us at this point," said Despatie, the Olympic silver medalist diving solo at Athens and a three-time world champion.

"The score and result in the final were satisfying. The Chinese won by a lot of points, and for us to make up ground, we need to work on the quality of our individual dives in particular.

"It was early in the morning, it was a large field and we had already earned the spot for Canada [at last year's worlds] for the Olympics, so it was hard for us too feel the pressure in the prelims," Miranda said after the Canadians opened up in ninth spot. "But a final is a final and we just found that pressure to perform in the evening and we were ready to compete."

Last year, Despatie and Miranda won silver at the world championships and stood second in the Beijing World Cup until their sixth and final dive.

In the women's 10 metres, Ruo Lin Chen of China took the lead in yesterday's preliminaries with 410.10 points. Her compatriot and world champion Xin Wang held second with 382.35, and Australian Loudy Wiggins was third with 374.95. Wiggins, formerly Loudy Tourky, is headed toward her fourth Olympics. She already has won two bronze medals and took 12 months away from competition, but couldn't feel comfortable with retirement.

Emilie Heymans of Saint-Lambert, Que., the bronze medalist at the World Cup in 2006, stood fifth with 368 points. The top 12 will advance to the semi-finals today. Marie-Ève Marleau of Laval, Que., was eliminated, placing 24th.

Canada has already earned its two available spots for the Olympics on women's tower.

Competition continues today with the completion of the women's tower and the preliminaries on men's three metres, with Despatie and Reuben Ross of Regina taking part. With a top-18 finish, Ross would qualify a second Olympic spot for Canada.

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