(Beijing, February 22) In the men's 10m synchronized platform preliminaries of the "Good Luck Beijing" 2008 FINA Diving World Cup held this morning, Lin Yue/Huo Liang of China finished first with a total score of 451.74pts, followed by Konstantin Khanbekov/Oleg Vikulov of Russia (425.16) and Patrick Hausding/Sascha Klein of Germany (420.54) respectively.

After the first two rounds where all divers chose plain dives rated 2.0, Lin/Huo of China ranked first with a score of 110.40pts, followed closely by Mathew Helm/Robert Newbery of Australia by a margin of 3.00.

In the third round where divers could choose dives without limit, Lin/Huo maintained their lead with 89.76 in 5253B (2½ somersaults 1½ twists piked, DD 3.4). Hausding/Klein of Germany and Khanbekov/Vikulov of Russia moved to the second and third places respectively with the identical score of 83.64.

For their fourth dives, both Lin/Huo and Hausding/Klein scored 80.64 in 407C (inward 3½ somersaults, DD 3.2). Khanbekov/Vikulov scored 78.72 in the same dive to secure the third place.

In the fifth round, Lin/Huo collected 87.72 in 307C (reverse 3½ somersaults, DD 3.4), while Helm/Newbery of Australia ascended to second with 87.48 in 207C (3½ somersaults, DD 3.6).

In the sixth and last round, Lin/Huo got 83.22 on a 5255B (2½ somersaults 2½ twists, DD 3.8), followed by Khanbekov/Vikulov and Hausding/Klein, both with 87.78 in the same dive.

After the preliminaries, 12 pairs from Russia, Germany, the United States, Australia, Cuba, Columbia, Mexico, UK, Ukraine, Belarus, Italy and host China made it to the finals scheduled for this evening. The finals will be a six-round competition with the first two rounds under an average coefficient of difficulty of 2.0 and the other four unlimited.