England's 10m mixed synchro teams ended the diving competitions at the 2022 Commonwealth Games with a bang by taking the gold and silver medals on Monday morning.
The mixed synchro events were taking place at the Commonwealths for the first time in Birmingham, and the home crowd had already witnessed Grace Reid and James Heatly win gold for Scotland in the 3m competition.
England did not manage to get on the podium in the 3m, but they dominated the field on the 10m platform, as Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix and Noah Williams took the inaugural title.
Spendolini-Sirieix and Williams found themselves at the top of the rankings after the two required dives and posted a total of 333.06 to surge to the gold medal.
The pair's fourth dive - the inward three-and-a-half tucked forward somersault - was the highest-scoring routine of the day with 84.48 points, including 9.0s on both execution and synchronisation.
Williams had also won gold with Matty Lee in the men's 10m synchro, while Spendolini-Sirieix is now a three-time Commonwealth Games medallist after her individual 10m gold and women's synchro silver with Eden Cheng.
"It's been incredible. We came in and wanted to have fun," Spendolini-Sirieix told BBC Sport. "I'm really pleased with how we executed our dives and our overall synchro. It's been really really fun."
It's gold in the mixed #diving #10m #platform #synchro 🥇 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 I'm crying! Andrea 🦆❤️ and Noah well done to you both 👊🏻 pic.twitter.com/VWVfAUYwUu
— Fred Sirieix (@fredsirieix1) August 8, 2022
Compatriots Lois Toulson and Kyle Kothari were 14.52 points back in the silver medal position for England, finishing with a total of 318.54 to add to the host nation's impressive medal haul.
Kothari's silver represented his first medal of the Commonwealth Games, while Toulson had already finished as runner-up to Spendolini-Sirieix in the women's 10m platform.
"To be honest we were a bit like 'is this going to work?' because you're thrown together, we had a small incline it might but it just shows today that it does," Kothari told BBC Sport.
Toulson added: "I'm not sure what the magic ingredient is but we've known each other for a long time. I think when we were put together we knew that we could do it but we've only done these dives three times together.
"I was looking forward to this competition as it's one of my only international competitions of the season. We've literally got one day to rest and then we go to the European Championships but after that we'll be taking a break."
Australia's Cassiel Rousseau and Emily Boyd clinched the bronze medal with a total of 309.60, as Scotland's Gemma McArthur and Angus Menmuir finished seventh, while Ruby Thorne and Aidan Heslop of Wales placed eighth.
England unsurprisingly top the Commonwealth Games diving medal standings with 15 in total - six of them gold - while Australia clinched four titles in their haul of 10 medals.
Canada ended with six medals - one of them gold - while Reid and Heatly's 3m synchro title was the only medal Scotland won in the diving. Malaysia clinched three silvers and a bronze but failed to bag a single gold.
Ben Knapton
