Bill Beacon

MONTREAL (CP) - A surprise bronze medal from teenage divers Roseline Filion and Meaghan Benfeito got Canada off to a flying start at the FINA world aquatic championships Sunday. Filion, 18, of Laval, Que., and Benfeito, 16, of Montreal rode boisterous home crowd support to third place in womens' 10-metre synchronized diving on the opening day of competition at the five-sport event.

"The crowd was really behind us and it was a lot of fun," said Filion. "We're not used to that.

"We're new to the Canadian diving team, so it was special."

A pair of diminutive Chinese 14-year-olds, Tong Jia and Pei Lin Yuan, won the women's synchro diving gold with 351.60 points from five dives, while Loudy Tourky and Chantelle Newberry of Australia won silver with 334.89 points. Filion and Benfeito had 328.80 points.

China also won gold in the men's three-metre synchronized event with He Chong and Feng Wang first. Tobias Schellenberg and Andreas Wels of Germany took the silver and American brothers Justin and Troy Dumais won bronze.

The Canadian pair of Arturo Miranda of Pointe-Claire, Que., and Reuben Ross of Regina did not qualify for the final.

China won six of eight diving golds at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and are well on their way to dominating another major meet.

"The Chinese have always been dominating right through my career," said Newberry, the Australian veteran who won the women's 10-metre platform event in Athens.

"We're getting closer to them. They're not impossible to beat, but they're very difficult. Loudy and I have been together only six months and we're working of getting closer to the Chinese."

Filion and Benfeito, who only began training together in April, had placed seventh in the morning preliminaries and surprised themselves by coming away with a bronze medal in the finals.

It helped that a crowd of about 2,500 at the Ile Ste-Helene diving facility let out a huge roar before and after each of their dives.

"We weren't expecting a medal after the preliminaries, but we just concentrated on each dive," said Benfeito. "This was our best performance so far."

They moved up to sixth with their first dive of the finals and then edged into fifth. A spectacular fourth dive - a back 3.5 tuck - vaulted them into fourth place.

"I have trouble with that dive sometimes," said Benfeito. "I had trouble this week, but I'm happy we put it in competition."

They moved past Germany and took the bronze with a clean back 2.5 with 1.5 twist.

Filion and Benfeito, who train together at the CAMO club in Montreal under coach Michel Larouche, won a spot on Canada's team when veterans Emilie Heymans and Blythe Hartley, bronze medallists in Athens, split up this year. They now have their eyes on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

The Canadian duo showed signs they were special last month, when they won bronze at the World Cup finals in Mexico.

"We have the same coach who teaches us the same technique," said Filion. "We train at the same pool and we're really good friends outside of diving and that helps. We have the same dives and we just try to put them together."

Filion is studying journalism at Andre Grasset College in Montreal while Befeito attends Antoine de St. Exupery High School.

Although both are only five-foot tall, they towered over the Jia and Yuan, who said they have trained together only three months.

It was a less happy day for the men's synchro duo, who were thrown together through controversy.

Miranda and Ross finished 16th out of 18 pairs in the preliminary round. Only the top 12 qualified for the finals.

They were thrown together last month when Miranda's regular partner Philippe Comtois of Montreal refused to dive with him.

Miranda, 34, was suspended for six months in March by Diving Canada for breaching the team's code of conduct amid allegations he had sex with a 15-year-old diver at the winter nationals in Calgary.

The suspension was lifted on June 29 and has been sent to the Sports Dispute Resolution Centre, which is to rule after the world championships.

Comtois said last month he would not dive with Miranda on principle. That decision probably cost Canada a spot in the final, although they were longshots for a medal.

Miranda said he hasn't spoken to Comtois and doesn't plan to.

"He has his principles. I have mine," he said. "I don't understand his.

"A lot of people supported me. The entire Canadian team supported me, in every way possible."

Miranda said he and Comtois would have earned a better result.

"I think it would have gone really well," Miranda said of diving with Comtois. "No offence to Reuben, but we've practised a lot more and we practised the hardest dives.

"(Ross) came on board late. No one could have done it better, but it would have been better than that."

Miranda will also compete in the individual three-metre springboard event on Tuesday. Ross is in the one-metre event on Thursday.

It cost the pair points when Ross clipped the board with his toes on the third of five dives, an inward two-a-half twist.

"It was good to get the experience today of diving at this level of competition,' said Ross, 19. "It'll be good for the one-metre.

"It was challenging because I hadn't practised on the three-metre. But it seemed to go well in training camp. I felt pretty confident coming here with Arturo as my partner. He's quite experienced. It's about as good as we could have expected."

On Monday, the women's one-metre springboard diving competition sees 2001 world champion Blythe Hartley of Vancouver and Martha Dale of Edmonton in action.

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