New Canadian diving duo Nathan Zsombor-Murray, Rylan Wiens earn world bronze | CBC Sports

It may be the beginning of a beautiful diving partnership.

New Canadian duo Nathan Zsombor-Murray and Rylan Wiens, with few training sessions together, racked up 417.12 points over six dives to earn a bronze medal in the men’s 10-metre platform synchro final on Tuesday at the world aquatics championships.

Earlier this month, they stood atop the podium following a 436.56-point performance at the FINA Diving Grand Prix in Calgary.

“Synchronized diving comes easily to us,” Zsombor-Murray of Pointe-Claire, Que., told reporters in Calgary. “We’re both strong as individual competitors, so when we dive together, everything flows well.”

The Canadians held a 20.85-point lead over Kirill Boliukh and Oleksii Sereda of Ukraine entering their final dive in Budapest, Hungary, and amassed 79.68 points on back 2 ½ somersaults 1 ½ twists to secure bronze after their opponent posted the identical score.

China’s Lian Junjie and Yang Hao led from the outset of the competition, collecting 467.79 points, with Matthew Lee and Noah Williams capturing silver (427.71).

Last summer in Tokyo, Zsombor-Murray and Wiens placed 13th and 19, respectively, in their first Olympics. They began working together in Japan in practice after Vincent Riendeau, Zsombor-Murray’s synchro partner, injured his back training at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.

Fortunately, Riendeau was able to dive and placed fifth with Zsombor-Murray in the synchro tower before they ended their diving partnership after two years, with the former retiring to concentrate on his university studies in electrical engineering at Polytechnique Montreal.

“As soon as we did that [practice] session, we watched the video and we’re like ‘Yeah, OK, well next year, once we kind of get paired up together, this is going to be a thing. We’re expecting this,”‘ Wiens of Saskatoon said recently.

“The goal is an Olympic medal in 2024.”