Arpon Basu

MONTREAL (CP) - Canadians Blythe Hartley and Melanie Rinaldi may have missed the podium in the women's three-metre springboard competition Friday, but neither of them will go home overly disappointed.

The Chinese tandem of Jingjing Guo and Min Xia Wu finished one-two on the three-metre board Friday while Italy's Tania Cagnotto nailed her final dive to jump into the bronze medal position at the world aquatic championships.

Vancouver's Hartley finished sixth with 557.97 points, just under 90 points short of Guo's gold-medal winning total of 645.54.

Montreal's Rinaldi finished a solid 10th with 498.09 points, marking only the third out of seven diving events thus far where Canada has failed to medal.

It was the second straight silver medal for Wu, who also came second to Hartley in the one-metre springboard competition Monday. For Hartley, finishing sixth on Friday allows her to fully enjoy Monday's gold.

"I'm a little bit disappointed with my performance today, not necessarily my placing, but it wasn't of the quality that I had hoped," said Hartley, 23.

"But overall, I'm so excited I was here participating at this event and the fact that I have a gold medal to go home with is exciting. I feel like I can finally let it sink in a little now that I've finished diving."

The diving competition began with a scare in the morning preliminary round when American diver Chelsea Davis hit her face on the board while attempting an inward 2 1/2 somersault in the tuck position.

A bloodied Davis, 17, was pulled from the pool with the help of German diving team head coach Lutz Buschkow, who jumped in the water to aid her.

"I was the one closest to the pool when I saw Chelsea hit the board," said Buschkow. "I didn't think twice about it and just jumped in the water to get her."

Davis was taken to Montreal General Hospital, but only required a few stitches on the bridge of her nose before she was released.

The three-metre springboard final was interrupted for 11 minutes by a heavy thunderstorm at 5:44 p.m., with Rinaldi set to dive next and only 10 divers left to perform their final dive of the competition.

Rinaldi, 26, was extremely satisfied with her result considering it was her first career world championships and she was coming off reconstructive knee surgery last September that kept her from diving for six months. She only began training on the springboard again in April.

"My goal was to make the semifinals," Rinaldi said. "When I made it there I told myself that I had reached my goal, and I'll just try to make five nice dives and see what it gives me. But if I had finished in the semifinals I would have been happy. It turned out to be enough to make the final, so I was that much happier."

Though the Chinese pair dominated throughout the competition, it was Cagnotto that made the biggest move in the final, receiving top-three scores on four of her five dives to squeak past Sweden's Anna Lindberg into the bronze medal slot by just over five points.

Cagnotto, whose father and coach Giorgio won silver on the three-metre board at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, was fully aware that she was only two points out of third heading into the final set of dives. But then the rain delay hit, and Cagnotto had to wait.

"I couldn't wait to finally finish that last dive because I was getting so nervous, that made me almost crazy, but it was the same thing for everyone," said Cagnotto, 20. "I always (check) after each dive (to see) where I am placed. I was counting the points to know how much I needed."

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