Daley and Brick struggle in final

13th FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Date: 17 July - 2 August Venue: Foro Italico, Rome

British divers Tom Daley and Max Brick finished ninth in the men's 10m synchro final in an inconsistent showing at the World Championships in Rome.

In the first major international final for the new pair, they were a promising fifth after two dives.

Daley, who won the 10m individual gold, was the more solid of the duo while Brick struggled a little as they ended with 390.36 points after six rounds.

Olympic champions Huo Liang and Lin Yue of China won gold with 482.58 points.

Daley and Brick were shown a masterclass by the champions but will have also gained encouragement from their performance after only joining forces in April.

Brick, 17, was mainly to blame for a poor third round dive as he gave up a huge splash on his entry into the water, which indicated his execution was lacking.

That dropped the pair from fifth to last in 12th and, although they moved up to 10th with their next effort, both struggled on their fifth effort as they languished in 11th.

But an excellent final dive showed what Daley and Brick are capable of as they moved up two places to finish in ninth.

"Training with Tom and going to Plymouth has been really good," said Brick as he reflected on their first three months together.

Despite finishing some way off the medals, Daley was also content with a week in which he became Britain's first individual world champion.

"I feel like I have been watching someone else do it," he said.

"It has just been great. It has been a pretty cool week to say the least.

"It has been highs and there have been a couple of lows, but that is what you get with being a diver because anything can happen."

But Brick is confident that his partner's new status as a world champion will not affect his synchro work.

"He is still Tom," he said.

Alexei Evangulov, who was overseeing his first major international competition as national performance director, was happy with the way the duo and the British team as a whole had performed.

"We have had nine finalists, seven top eight finishes and one gold medal," he said.

"The performance of the team has made me hopeful of future successful performances because we have been mainly successful here."

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the World Championships the British synchronised swimming team finished 10th in their final.

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