Chinese teenager Wang Zongyuan marked a perfect debut at the 18th FINA World Swimming Championships, coming back from behind to take the men's 1m springboard title in Guangju, South Korea on Sunday.

Wang, pacesetter in the preliminaries, suffered a rusty early stage in the final, ranking a tied third in his first dive, 5th in the second and down to 7th after three dives.

The 18-year-old Wang found his form in the fourth round and moved up to rank second. He led the last two dives, collecting a total of 440.25 points for the gold medal.

"I was in a fog and got lost in the first half of the competition. Then I started to realize I should calm down and find out my normal form. My coach also encouraged me to be focused on the technical details. I was happy with the gold medal. I hope I could compete in the Olympic Games someday," Wang said.

Mexican veteran Rommel Pacheco Marrufo and defending champion Peng Jianfeng of China both did the same feat as they surged from behind to win the silver on 420.15 and bronze on 415.00 respectively.

Pacheco Marrufo celebrated his 33-year-old birthday two days ago.

"It was my eighth World Championships and a silver medal was the best birthday gift. I did not train much in the 1m springboard, so my degree of difficulty was lower than most of the divers. I tried to dive as good as possible and waited until the last dive," said the Mexican diving star.

Peng was disappointed in his performance. "I could not believe that I was not me today. I did much worse in the final than I usually did during training. But a bronze at last was a comfort to me, "Peng said.

Local favorite Haram Woo failed to win a medal, finishing fourth with a total of 406.15 points.

Chinese teenagers Zhang Jiaqi/Lu Wei came out as the Wonder Girls by crowning the women's 10m platform synchro, a tenth consecutive success for China in the event.

China swept five diving gold medals on offer so far at the championships in Gwangju.

Zhang/Lu, who competed in their first worlds, built up their dominance since the beginning of the final and performed five flawless dives, winning in a total of 345.24 points.

"We had two big mistakes in the easy dives (in the preliminaries) this morning. So we took time to check out the problems through video watching. We improved in the final and we won the championship. It was the first worlds for both of us, we were very nervous indeed. We encouraged each other before and after each dive. That helped us a lot," said the 15-year-old Zhang, a double winner at lat year's World Cup in Wuhan, central China.

Competing in her 10th worlds, Malaysian veteran Mun Yee Leong and Pandelela Pamg, in her 6th worlds, showed that stability and experience were the most important elements as they won the silver medals with a total score of 312.72 points.

Samantha Brombe/Katrina Young of the United States overturned the Canadian duo Meagan Benfeito/Caeli Mckay in the fifth and last dive, winning the bronze medals by 304.86, 0.81 points. The Canadians finished fourth.

"We were excited to get the Olympic qualification and finished third at last. In fact, we were very nervous before the last dive which was our favorite. But when we were on the platform, we concentrated on our own dive, not the others," Young said.

Chinese duo Sun Wenyan/Huang Xuechen took silver in the women's duet technical artistic swimming on Sunday.

Sun/Huang, the runners-up in the preliminary round, finished second with 94.0072 points at Yeomju Gymnasium in Gwangju, about 330 km to the south of South Korea's capital Seoul.

That was 1.8938 behind reigning world champion Svetlana Kolesnichenko/Svetlana Romashina of Russia, who ranked first in 95.9010.

The gold medal is the 15th world championship title for Kolesnichenko, who won her first gold of this championship in the solo technical event on Saturday.

Anastasiya Savchuk/Marta Fiedina of Ukraine took the bronze in 92.5847, and Japanese pair Megumu Yoshida/Yukiko Inui came in fourth at 92.1116.

The 29-year-old Sun won a silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, and her teammate Huang, 29, took a silver at the 2015 FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia.

(Cover: (L-R) Silver medalist and Mexican Rommel Marrufo, gold medalist from China Wang Pyongyang and his bronze medalist compatriot Peng Jianfeng celebrate during the medals ceremony of the men's 1m springboard diving event at the 2019 FINA World Championships at Nambu International Aquatics Centre in Gwangju, South Korea, July 14, 2019. /VCG Photo)