Russia retained the synchronized swimming duet free title as Natalia Ishchenko and Svetlana Romashina won gold at the World Championships here on Friday. The Russians scored 98.333 points to edge perennial bridesmaids Gemma Mengual and Andrea Fuentes of Spain into second by just half a point with Chinese twins Jiang Tingting and Jiang Wenwen taking home the bronze. Russia was the reigning champion although with previous pairing Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova. For Ishchenko this was her third gold medal at these championships and her ninth world title, while it was Romashina's second gold here in Rome. Romashina partnered Davydova to duet technical gold earlier in the week while Ishchenko won both the solo free and solo technical competitions. “We are very happy to have secured the gold medal. We wanted to distinguish ourselves from the other swimmers,” said Romashina. “Our performance was perfect, our choreography was easy and full of little details.” Spain's Mengual finished second to Russians in all those events and now has 10 silver medals from world championships as well as seven bronze. But at the age of 32 she finally broke her gold medal duck on Wednesday when Spain won the free combination team event. Guo, Wu defend 3m title Olympic champions Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia have won the gold medal in women's 3-meter synchronized diving. Guo and Wu, the defending world champions, earned 348 points over five dives Friday. Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallape of Italy took silver with 329.70 points, and Julia Pakhalina and Anastasia Pozdniakova of Russia were third with 310.80.
